


The Windhelm Murders, Redux: Now Comes the Mourning

by ktyxdovahkiin



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Blood and Soil - Freeform, Detectives, Fantastic Racism, Fourteen Words - Freeform, Grief/Mourning, Infant Death, Justice, Love, Murder, Murder Mystery, Truth, miscegenation - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-12-01 22:33:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20920289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktyxdovahkiin/pseuds/ktyxdovahkiin
Summary: When Luaffyn of Windhelm comes to Heljarchen Hall stricken with grief and crying for justice, the Dragonborn prevails upon Brelyna Maryon - a longtime companion and honored guest at the Hall - to discover the truth of the matter. Brelyna is made the Voice of the Dragonborn... but in Eastmarch, the wounds of war still run deep, and society is still rife with barbaric beliefs and savage hatreds. What will she say, as the Dragonborn's Voice? What is the way forward for Windhelm, for Eastmarch, for all Skyrim?This story is inspired by Lois McMaster Bujold's "The Mountains of Mourning", from her Vorkosigan Saga.





	1. Chapter 1

Brelyna Maryon heard the woman before seeing her. Voices rising with agitation were wafting over on the air from the front gates of Heljarchen Hall, where Brelyna had been guesting for about two months. A pair of Shield Maidens sparring nearby paid no attention to the altercation, but Brelyna found she was becoming distracted.

She was just finishing her final round of morning exercises in the yard. Despite the ever-present biting chill, sweat beaded her ebony skin and soaked into the cloth of her gear – really, it was little more than a band of cloth wound several times around her chest, and a somewhat thick loincloth, but the Shield Maidens of Heljarchen Hall were given to calling this getup “training harness”. Of course, most of them were Nords, but any woman who took up training here had to wear the same outfit.

It was becoming quite the commotion at the front gates. Frowning, Brelyna let the long weighted metal bar in her hands down onto ground with a muffled thud, grunting with relief at the cessation of the strain on her muscles. Then she trudged over to the gates, her sandaled feet making crunching noises as they landed on the frosted ground. Her leg muscles complained with every step she took. But they _were _getting noticeably bigger and stronger, she consoled herself. She’d never match the sheer physical prowess of a Nord or Orcish woman, of course, but as the Dragonborn taught, any improvement was to be celebrated.

The gate guard on duty was Shield Maiden Lifts-Heavy-Rocks, whose tail was curled up and swishing irritably just then. The woman was still standing out of sight behind the palisade, but her voice wafted over, heavy with the overtones of grief and exhaustion. “Please, I just want to see her. I need her help. I need her justice! Please, just let me talk to her…!”

“I’ve told you, the Dragonborn isn’t here right now. Come on, get _up,_ please! You can rest here for a while, and we’ll give you some fresh warm clothes, but then you have to go back home. Report it to your Jarl. Ask _him_ for justice. It’s what he’s for!”

“I tell you, there is no justice to be had from _him! _There’s no justice in Windhelm!”

Brelyna by then had moved to a position from which she could see the woman who was speaking, and she stopped short as she took in the sight before her.

It was a fellow Dunmer, one whom Brelyna had seen before, long ago. She was on her knees, and shockingly her torso was bare – her clothing appeared rent, yet no wounds scored her skin, so it likely hadn’t been an animal attack in the wild. Her stringy hair hung down across a thin face pinched with fatigue. The signs were of recent privation – once, Brelyna had seen that same face when the woman to whom it belonged had been relatively cleaned up, washed and well-fed. Now, she was almost painfully lean, yet remarkably full-breasted.

No, that was not quite right, Brelyna noted – there were dried milk streaks blotching her skin. Only temporarily full-breasted, but there was no baby in sight. Barefoot, too – Brelyna came closer and saw that the woman’s feet were cracked and bleeding.

Lifts-Heavy-Rocks looked up and saw Brelyna. “Ah, good, I erect the spine of gratitude for your fortuitous presence, Brelyna. Maybe _you_ can talk some sense into her,” she said, sounding thoroughly exasperated. “I’ve asked Frida to go fetch some drinking water and perhaps a dose of healing draught for her feet. She won’t come in. Says she’ll only present her case to the Dragonborn herself. But she isn’t in residence right now, as you know, unless I’ve managed to miss a dragon landing in the courtyard. I don’t think my eyes are as bad as that,” she remarked dryly. “Will you talk to her for me? Please? I hate to impose on an honored guest like this, but well, I’m not quite sure what to do with her.”

“It’s quite all right, Lifts-Heavy-Rocks. Let’s… see what we can do,” Brelyna told the Argonian, who seemed relieved and moved aside, gesturing for Brelyna to go ahead.

The Dunmer woman looked up uncertainly at Brelyna, clearly not knowing what to make of her. There were more than a dozen Dark Elf Shield Maidens at Heljarchen Hall, so she could be forgiven for thinking Brelyna was one of them, even though Lifts-Heavy-Rocks had just referred to her as a guest. So if she was another Shield Maiden, albeit senior in rank, Brelyna surmised that she would still be unsatisfactory to this supplicant since she wasn’t the Dragonborn. And if she was merely a guest, however honored, then what use could she be? Such thoughts probably accounted for the mistrustful gaze being directed her way.

Still, this was one of her people. Brelyna crouched in front of her – trying not to wince too much – and gave her an encouraging smile. “I think I know you. You’re Luaffyn, aren’t you? Luaffyn Llothas? From Windhelm?”

Luaffyn nodded slowly. Her protuberant red eyes stared bleakly into Brelyna’s own. “How do you know me?” she said in a low whisper.

“I heard you sing, some time ago. It’s been quite a few years, I think. In Candlehearth Hall, wasn’t it? My name is Brelyna Maryon, of the College of Winterhold. I was traveling with the Dragonborn then, so we both caught your performance that evening.”

“The Dragonborn.” Luaffyn’s eyes lit up. She reached forward and clutched Brelyna’s shoulders tightly. “I must see her. I must! She must Speak to me! I need her justice! She must give me justice!”

“Please… try to calm down! Luaffyn!” Brelyna tried to pry those fingers from her flesh as gently as she could. But Luaffyn’s fingers gripped with the strength of agonized madness. “You’ve come a really long way. Wouldn’t you rather come in, warm yourself by a fire, perhaps have some hot soup?”

But Luaffyn ignored her cajolery. “Justice,” she whispered fiercely, staring at nothing in particular. “She said, let it fall like rain… let it roll down like mighty waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream… she said so. That’s what she said. She Shouted it, from atop her mountain. Everyone heard it. I need it. I need her justice…”

“Justice for… what? What has happened?”

“Murder.” The word hung in the air like a sudden thundercloud on a clear day. Luaffyn growled, “I want justice for a murder.”

“Who… who has been killed?” Brelyna could not help herself – her voice came out in a hushed whisper.

“My baby. My baby girl. My Llevana. My lovely Llevana…” Luaffyn’s voice cracked and she broke down into sobs that wracked her body. Lifts-Heavy-Rocks made a small noise of consternation, but said nothing.

Brelyna swallowed hard. “Will the Jarl’s Steward not hear your case and give you justice? Jarl Brunwulf Free-Winter is known as a good ruler…”

“The Steward will do nothing! He won’t even bring my case before the Jarl! He says it is a sad mishap but not murder, even though it is, and he threw my case out! A _mishap! _He’ll only listen to the others, but not to me! I won’t let my Llevana go unavenged! I will have justice for her! The Dragonborn’s own justice!”

Brelyna frowned thoughtfully. It had been some years since she’d gone out Eastmarch way, but she remembered that after the Civil War had been brought to an official end, Brunwulf Free-Winter had begun taking active steps to heal rifts between the different communities in Windhelm. For a Steward he had appointed a citizen held in high regard by all, a “Captain” Lonely-Gale. Representatives of the Dunmer and Argonian communities sat in on his council. Windhelm still wasn’t a city Brelyna particularly wanted to visit, especially after her personal experiences there, but she’d heard that things were improving. Slowly, yes, but nevertheless improving.

And as the Dragonborn taught, any improvement deserved to be celebrated…

“Six days I’ve walked, from Hollyfrost Farm,” Luaffyn rasped. Her voice had been beautiful, hadn’t it? Brelyna dimly recalled that she had been quite a talented singer. To have her voice changed so much by grief… one could only hope it wasn’t lasting damage. “I have come here… to high-standing Heljarchen… Hall…”

Brelyna caught her in her arms as she swooned. “She walked six days, across Eastmarch,” Brelyna said to Lifts-Heavy-Rocks. “She must’ve walked day and night, without stopping. The gods only know how she managed it all alone!”

Lifts-Heavy-Rocks shook her head in commiseration. “Look, I see Frida coming back. I’ll have Frida take my post here while I help you with her. I’ll take the feet. Let’s get her inside. We can get her warm and fed, at least.”

“Justice,” Luaffyn murmured in her delirium as they carried her across the courtyard and across the threshold of the main doors into the Great Hall. “Justice… Llevana…”

Sometime later, there was the flapping of dragon wings, and then the muffled thump of a landing.

Brelyna was freshly bathed by then, and had broken her fast with herbed bread and a hearty stew of beef and tomatoes. Now wearing her usual robes, she went out to greet the Dovahkiin, her old friend and companion, at the door.

The Dragonborn appeared solemn and grave as they embraced on the steps. Behind her, in the courtyard, the dragon Odahviing curled his tail about himself and made as if to recline for a nap.

“So… I suppose you already know what happened just now.”

The Dragonborn smiled sadly, and nodded. There was a strange tension about her eyes.

“Is it truly a murder?” Brelyna asked her.

She nodded, once.

“So you will hear her case?”

She hesitated, then nodded again. Then she said, “Come with me.”

“Me? But…”

“This is something only you can do, Brelyna.”

Brelyna felt a coldness settle in the pit of her stomach, replacing the warm fullness that had been there just a moment ago. A murdered baby… a murdered Dunmer baby, in Windhelm. She wanted nothing to do with this. And yet… the Dragonborn had just asked her, personally.

It was practically a geas.

“I… I guess we should go hear her out then. If she’s awake, that is, and ready to speak…”

“She is.”

“Yes… yes, of course. That’s why you’re here, after all.” Brelyna laughed, nervously.

The Dragonborn nodded.

They went in together. Brelyna wondered just how much of a coincidence it really was that two months ago she had decided to stay at Heljarchen Hall for a time, to train her body as the Shield Maidens did so that her physical abilities would not lag too far behind her magical and mental ones. Was her fate already plotted out for her like a straight track she could not perceive, and was she bound to follow it slavishly every step of the way, all the while believing that she was making her own decisions, her own destiny?

_ Whatever the future brings, Master Neloth, I can be damned sure of one thing at least: it will not have you in it. I am done with House Telvanni. I am done with Morrowind. _

_ _

**

The fire crackled quietly in the hearth.

“Hollyfrost Farm has been my home for more than two years,” Luaffyn said slowly, her voice still soft and raw from days of anguish. “I married Grimvar Cruel-Sea when he came of age. Idesa Sadri acted as my go-between. Llevana was born just… just twenty-nine days ago.” Her voice went ragged. “But Grimvar killed her.”

Brelyna looked over at where the Dragonborn sat. The Dragonborn was looking steadily at the weeping Luaffyn, but she caught Brelyna’s questioning gaze and shook her head just a fraction of an inch.

“Did you… did you see him do it?” _And am I expected to go over there and set the blood price on the young man’s head, or carry out the sentence myself?_

“No… but…” Luaffyn hesitated, trying to collect her thoughts. “She cried and she cried, my Llevana did… a good, strong voice, but the farmhouse isn’t large, and ever since my family moved here to live with me, moved here from Mournhold… I mean to say, moved to Eastmarch, to the farm… it hasn’t been the easiest time. Grimvar sometimes shouted at me to shut her up…”

“Your family?”

“My mother and younger brother,” Luaffyn affirmed. “The family farm in Mournhold was failing. The land was too marshy. I sent word that I’d married into the Cruel-Sea family. There was some correspondence. I spoke to Torsten, my father-in-law, and his wife Hillevi… it was all arranged, and they came over to live and work as tenants.”

“I see. Do they have their own bedroom as you do?”

Luaffyn gave her a strange doubtful look. “Muthsera, we only have the one room,” she said. “You know Nord farmhouses, surely. A large room aboveground, and a cellar below.”

“Of course. Yes. Please, go on. What… what happened on that day?”

“Well, he… Grimvar… it was evening, and he’d been home for just a while, but Llevana wasn’t nursing properly… she was crying again, and Grimvar started to swear and shout, said that he was going out to Candlehearth, said that at least there a working man could pay for a room and get some sleep. Then finally, finally she was asleep, and I put her down into the cradle… Grimvar had made it himself, carved it with his own hands…”

That didn’t seem to be indicative of a hulking, rage-driven brute, as Grimvar Cruel-Sea had become in Brelyna’s imagination, but one never knew.

“I went out of the house, to gather some snowberries… I always mixed snowberries into her porridge, for health…”

“Was there anyone else at home?”

“No. I only stepped out for a while… went up the road a short way… snowberry bushes growing wild… and when I came back… I just wanted to rest, myself, it had been such a long time since I’d slept properly…” Luaffyn’s eyes filled again with tears. “I drowsed in bed for a time, but then I began to get full,” her hand moved up to touch a breast, “and then I went to wake her… and…”

When the sobbing had subsided, Brelyna ventured another question. “Did you see any marks on her? Any sign of injury?”

“No… she just wasn’t breathing, and no matter what I did I couldn’t get her to start again… They found me later on the road, I was running to find someone, anyone who could help, a priest or a healer. But then they said it was just an accident, and that these things happened, I must’ve overlain her… _I did not!_ I would’ve known! I wouldn’t have done any such thing! Someone… someone killed my baby… It must’ve been Grimvar, there was no one else around for miles… Llevana, Llevana…!”

Later, when Luaffyn had been helped into a bed where, gods willing, she had fallen into a deep and dreamless slumber, Brelyna sat down again with the Dragonborn by the hearthfire. The Dragonborn was holding an ornamental silver plate in her hands, looking at it pensively. The flickering flames glinted and danced on its reflective surface.

“I suppose I will have to verify the facts of the matter,” she said, eventually. “Cause of death. Find the real killer.”  
  
The Dragonborn nodded.

“She couldn’t positively identify Grimvar as the murderer,” Brelyna mused. Her brows furrowed as she pondered the matter. “Grimvar Cruel-Sea… the name is familiar…”

The Dragonborn said nothing, but continued looking at the plate in her hands. Brelyna narrowed her eyes, and squinted. The plate looked familiar.

Suddenly, she gasped as the recollection came flooding back.

“I remember him now,” she exclaimed. “Outside the old Arentino house! He was a mere stripling. Barely… fifteen winters? He’ll be a young man now, I suppose, but only just! How did he come to marry Luaffyn? Luaffyn has got to be…” Brelyna performed a quick mental calculation, “… more than three times his age!”

The Dragonborn smiled sadly, and hummed a soft tune.

“I guess love finds a way,” Brelyna conceded. “But still… it’s hard to think of Grimvar as a killer. Not cold-blooded, no. Passion? Rage? Insanity? Just how bad is the squalling of a baby, anyway? I mean, I haven’t spent that much time around any. Would that have been enough to drive a man to do such a thing? Say… you don’t suppose the Madgod would have anything to do with this, do you?”

The Dragonborn raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, yes, I’ll know more when I get there,” Brelyna said testily. “I’ll need someone to help me carry my things – especially my alchemical kit. I strongly suspect I’ll need it. I don’t suppose I could ask you to lend me one of your…”

The great doors opened then, and a dark-haired Nord woman came in, quickly shutting the doors to keep the cold out. Then she shrugged her fur cloak off her broad shoulders and strode into the Hall, presenting herself on bended knee to the Dragonborn.

“You summoned me, my Thane?”

“Yes, Lydia. I charge you to accompany my friend, Brelyna Maryon, as she travels to Eastmarch and undertakes a task at my behest. I charge you also to render all due assistance to her, as she requests and requires. Will you do this for me?”

“Yes, Dragonborn,” Lydia sighed, turning her eyes to Brelyna, whose mouth had fallen open slightly. “I’m sworn to carry your burdens,” she said, with weary forbearance. “Good to be traveling with you again, though.”

“I say,” Brelyna found her voice again, “you didn’t have to assign one of your own housecarls…”

“In fact, I do.” The Dragonborn spoke gently. “I want you to be my Voice.”

Once again, Brelyna found herself dumbstruck.

The Dragonborn knew more than she was letting on. She usually did. What was it about this matter, really? Why was it that she couldn’t attend to it personally, yet required Brelyna to function as her Voice in her stead?

This unique honor and burden had been entrusted only to two other individuals so far. Brelyna would be the third.

She took a sip of spiced wine to wet her dry throat. “So, this is that important,” she said quietly. “I don’t know that I’m up to it.”

The Dragonborn tilted her head to one side and said nothing.  
  
“I’m really going to find this task unpleasant, aren’t I.” It was not a question.

The Dragonborn nodded sadly.

Brelyna heaved a sigh. She felt as if there was a great weight pressing upon her shoulders. “Well… if you think I can do it…”

“You are the only one who can.”

_Worse and worse. _“I’ll do it, then. I’ll do my best. I won’t dishonor you.”

“No, you won’t.” The Dragonborn spoke as if it was a simple observation of fact. This did nothing to quell the unease within Brelyna.

By Azura, she wasn’t even a trained Tongue; she’d studied some Dovahzul, the language of the Dragons, but not enough to be really fluent in it, much less to perform any Shouts. It was still little more than a passing scholarly interest. She loved to study, to learn new things. This made her a neophyte with a wide range of skills, but left her with mastery of none. Her teachers at the College always praised her for being a quick learner capable at times of surprising insight, but she never stuck with a single discipline long enough to achieve the level of formidable competence everyone seemed to think she could. Master Neloth always scolded her for being little more than a dabbler, a dilettante, wasting her considerable talent and heritage…

Well. She had promised herself not to care about his opinions any longer. But some habits of mind were hard to break.

She slept lightly that night, and woke with the breaking of the dawn. Luaffyn Llothas looked haggard; Brelyna hoped with all her heart that the bereaved woman had managed to grab some sleep, at least. The ride back to Windhelm, taken at a sensible though brisk pace, would be at least a week long. It would be good to have a familiar traveling companion again, at least, in the person of Lydia. The old camaraderie was always going to be there.

Six days she had walked, on foot, from the far reaches of Eastmarch, to Heljarchen Hall…

Before their party left, while the burly Lydia saw to their pack sorrels and made the final adjustments to the harnesses, the Dragonborn took Brelyna aside for a while, and Spoke to her, making her the Voice of the Dragonborn in truth.

Then the Dragonborn reached into her satchel, rummaged around for a while, and pulled out a silver locket. She gazed at it sadly for some time, and then pressed it into Brelyna’s hands.

“This belonged to Fjotli Cruel-Sea, Grimvar’s older sister. She was murdered years ago by thieves. When the time is right, you will know what to do with this.”

Brelyna nodded, and put the locket carefully into her own pouch.

The Dragonborn rested a hand on Brelyna’s shoulder for a long, long time. Finally, she leaned in and whispered her parting words into Brelyna’s ear. The words would stay with her for many days to come.

“Love is first. Never abandon. Never abandon.”


	2. Chapter 2

Their horses were of sturdy northern stock: big shaggy beasts built for endurance, surefooted on uneven ground. Brelyna had been given a placid mare of phlegmatic disposition. The Maidens were, after all, very considerate of their honored guests, and they knew Brelyna bore an almost stereotypical Dunmer mistrust of the entire equine species.

They each rode a horse apiece, but Brelyna had perforce laden a fourth sorrel with chests and bundles containing her personal effects, including books and valuable alchemical equipment. A Feather rune alleviated the load somewhat, but she still felt a twinge of guilt as she watched the pack mare plod along with the heap of baggage piled high atop her back. Every night, when they made camp, Lydia was of great help when it came to unpacking and unloading, even if she did grumble under her breath all the time at the uneven division of physical labor.

By day, the Nord housecarl wore a suit of fine steel plate with worn fur trimmings, and her brawny arms were bare – a testament to Nord resilience in cold climes. In weather that would see Brelyna and Luaffyn huddling under double-layered cloaks, Lydia would remain bare-armed and bare-headed, sighing happily at the bracing breeze on her face. The weather was getting colder. It was halfway through the month of Hearthfire, and soon it would be Frostfall, the onset of winter. Brelyna ardently hoped that this affair could be satisfactorily resolved by then.

Luaffyn’s distress seemed to have abated somewhat, at last, but she remained sunk in silence, her hollow-cheeked face hooded most of the time as she rode. Brelyna felt a pang of sympathy as she looked sideways at her – they were riding side by side on this broad stretch of road, with Lydia leading the pack horse some distance ahead. They had seen no other travelers all day, and the silence was beginning to grate on Brelyna’s nerves. She cleared her throat awkwardly.

“So… Luaffyn, you said your mother and brother had come to join you?”

“Yes, muthsera. My mother Radene, and my brother Llaro. As I told you, our family farm on the outskirts of Mournhold was as good as dead.”

“Unfortunate, that. And please, call me Brelyna. Do you, um, have any other surviving family?”

“None that I know of.” She turned to Brelyna. “We don’t all have the fortune to be born into great houses… muthsera.” She said this with only a mild touch of bitterness, but it was there for those with the ears to hear it.

Llothas was not a name of any discernible heritage; Maryon, on the other hand, was a cadet branch of the long-renowned House Telvanni, one of the truly Great Houses of Morrowind. When Luaffyn had said “great house”, she hadn’t meant one of the Five, but she certainly recognized the significance of Brelyna’s family name. So she had been paying attention, even in the throes of her grief…

Brelyna shook her head. “I cut ties with House Telvanni a long time ago. I went to study in the College of Winterhold, to make my own way in the world. Any remaining affiliation is only a weak one, by now.”

She could sense Luaffyn’s questioning eyes studying her, weighing her. And why not? When she had gone to Heljarchen Hall, in her moment of deepest need, she had surely been hoping that the Dragonborn herself would attend to her case. Or if not, then perhaps a few Shield Maidens could be sent to speak to the Jarl, or dispense justice with their own hands. Well, a Shield Maiden she surely had, in the person of Lydia, Keeper of Breezehome, Housecarl of Whiterun, and vaunted hero of a dozen songs in her own right… but Lydia had made it clear that this matter fell entirely within Brelyna’s purview, and that on this trip she was for all practical purposes Brelyna’s bodyguard; the brawn to Brelyna’s brains, as it were.

What would Luaffyn make of her – a fellow Dunmer, holding no particular rank in Skyrim’s high society, but sent now as a lone representative to fight Luaffyn’s case? She had defied family, it seemed, to come all this way and go to the most extreme lengths conceivable to win for herself her desired justice. And the Dragonborn had given her, as her shield and support, Brelyna Maryon.

Brelyna could not help wishing that she had not been present in the yard when Luaffyn came crying her grief to the skies.

She continued her line of questioning, hoping that she wasn’t plunging this careworn woman even more deeply into her private well of pain. “And… your Nord side of the family? The Cruel-Seas, they’re quite well-known all over Skyrim. There’s the family head, Torsten, and his wife, Hillevi…”

“And his son, Grimvar.” Luaffyn’s mouth set. “Whom I loved, but who turned out to be a murderer. Of his own child.” Her eyes blazed defiantly.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Brelyna said carefully. “That is part of the charge given me, to determine the truth of things. You say you loved him. Surely he loved you as well, in some way. Do you truly believe in your heart it was him?”

Luaffyn fell silent. Brelyna waited. Theirs had surely not been a political marriage, or one made for expediency of any kind. The Cruel-Seas were wealthy, where the Llothas family were, to put it bluntly, impoverished. Luaffyn had been a raw, untrained tavern songstress – albeit extremely talented – singing songs about the valor of the Stormcloaks and their leader Ulfric so that she wouldn’t have to sleep in the cold. But after the rebellion was put down, life for her and her kind had not changed materially or significantly for the better.

No… there had to have been something between them, some real affection underpinning the marriage from the beginning. Nord patriarchs of wealthy families like the Cruel-Seas were notoriously proud and arrogant, especially when it came to matters of racial heritage. Practically every such patriarch had supported Ulfric Stormcloak during the benighted Civil War the wretch had begun: Vulwulf of the Snow-Shods in Riften, Torbjorn of the Shatter-Shields and Torsten of the Cruel-Seas in Windhelm, Thongvor and Thonar of the Silver-Bloods of Markarth, Vignar of the Gray-Manes of Whiterun, and so forth. If Torsten Cruel-Sea had countenanced this marriage, it had to have been something with genuine emotional power and moral suasion.

“It could only have been him,” Luaffyn muttered at last. “He was so angry. He had been angry for days, weeks. We all had. Tempers were frayed in the farmhouse. We share it with Tulvur, Torsten’s farm manager, and then lately with my mother and brother. None of them were around on that day, that evening. And she was not overlain. She was __not. __I would never have done that. So if it wasn’t Grimvar… but who else could have…”

Brelyna’s heart sank. _So much for small talk._ She wanted to comfort Luaffyn somehow, but she seemed singularly inept at it so far. The grimness of her task was weighing on her mind. Emotional succor would have to wait, she decided, until the pertinent facts of the case were ascertained.

Luaffyn spent the next few days in even more reticence than before, responding only cursorily to Brelyna’s overtures. On the evening of the sixth day they made camp at a scenic spot, where the Yorgrim River and the White River met and merged. Following the water would take them to the very gates of Windhelm. Lydia had caught a couple of wild hares, and Brelyna had taken on the task of marinating the meat so that it would be less stringy.

“No Chaurus eggs this time, Brelyna?” Lydia laughed as she walked past to sit on a tree stump. She’d just gotten a merry fire blazing.

Brelyna chuckled too at their shared private joke. “Oh, will you lot ever let me live it down,” she sighed ruefully, rolling her eyes skyward.

“You should be grateful that bit didn’t make it into all the songs,” Lydia retorted. “I’ve half a mind to send a letter to the Bards’ College and set the record straight on a thing or two!”

Brelyna shook her head, still chuckling, and caught Luaffyn’s eye. Luaffyn was sitting by the fire, but her face had come alive for the first time since she had first appeared at the gates of Heljarchen Hall. She was actually smiling!

This was an opportunity too good to miss. Brelyna gave her the brightest smile she could muster. “Don’t mind us, it’s just something from the past that Lydia here likes to dredge up.”

“You mean, from your time together in Blackreach?”

Brelyna paused. “You… know about that?”

“I’m a bard,” Luaffyn explained patiently. “Not College-trained, but still a bard who performs every week for extra coin. I know the entire Lay of Blackreach, all eleven drapas of it. I should be ashamed if I didn’t know I was traveling with two out of the Eight and One Companions. The Sacred Band of Blackreach.”

Brelyna blushed a little to hear that name. It had always seemed a little overblown to her. She hadn’t felt particularly consecrated, after all, when they had embarked on that expedition that was to become the stuff of living legend. The gods had never been a large part of her thinking, and she knew her pragmatism had been shared by quite a few others in their party. But the Lay of Blackreach, as the epic poem was now known, would have it that each one of them represented one of the Nine Divines, and practically took on the aspect of that god while on their adventure in the vast underground city.

Eight companions, herself and Lydia among them, had gone with the Dragonborn into those unfathomable depths, to witness things that few living eyes on Nirn had ever beheld. Predictably, of course, popular imagination immediately and automatically ascribed the role of Talos to the Dragonborn herself. Brelyna had been, if those songs were to be believed in their entirety, the personal champion of Julianos.

Feeling faintly ridiculous, Brelyna shrugged. “Well… that’s us, I suppose. I’m not a very sacred person, I’m afraid. I think you’ll find me rather profane, actually. I certainly don’t go to temples very often.”

“Say it isn’t so.” Luaffyn’s eyes crinkled merrily. “So you didn’t raise your hands and give thanks to Julianos after overcoming that bronze Dwemer giant?”

Lydia, sitting across from her at the fire, threw her head back and guffawed. “Oh, yes. Talos be praised,” she chortled, “now _that_ was a fight to remember! Nothing you’ll find in any of the songs out there.”

Brelyna was just glad to see Luaffyn’s face alight with interest at something, anything at all, and so she bore it with good grace as Lydia coaxed her into recounting the aforementioned event – the true, unabridged and non-bowdlerized version.

“Well,” Brelyna began, “we were on the lookout for Crimson Nirnroot, as the Dragonborn had instructed us all to be. For some strange reason the Dragonborn had been particularly insistent that we collect and preserve as many samples as we could. While traipsing along the banks of an underground river, in the poor light provided by the faint luminescence of the underground fungus, I spotted one of the damned things, and I verified that it was emitting that distinctive sound peculiar to all Nirnroot. While reaching for it, though, my foot slipped and I stumbled, stepping right into the middle of a clutch of Chaurus eggs, as luck would have it.

“Whereupon the concealed Chaurus Reapers and Hunters nearby sprang into frenzied motion, enraged at my wanton actions, no doubt. Acting quickly – and with admirable wit and perspicacity, if I do say so myself – I sprinted back down the road we had been following, quite sensibly leading the furious Chaurus away from the rest of the party and towards a lone wandering Giant we had chanced to see earlier. But in the event, I found myself unable to locate the Giant again just then.

“Somewhat discombobulated, I looked around and realized I was standing right in front of a dormant Dwemer centurion – a bronze giant, as you put it, and it was standing within its… frame. It’s akin to hanging a wooden puppet on a peg. That was where it stood when it was at rest, inactive.

“Anyway, to activate it, I went behind and pulled the accompanying lever. The huge automaton came alive and stepped out of its frame all ready to cause quite a considerable amount of havoc to its environs, which at the moment included a fair number of angry Chaurus. And it was just at that moment that the Giant I’d mentioned earlier came lumbering around a corner, and became very irate at all these intrusions into his territory, and… well…

“It was quite the battle royal, that’s all I can say about that. And I was right in the middle of it all, trying my best to stay alive. So I found myself obliged, you see, to dodge about as nimbly as I could. This perforce entailed some feats of acrobatics and athleticism…”

“She means she had to roll around on the ground a lot,” Lydia put in, grinning. “We could hear her screams. Very harrowing.”

“Yes, well, as I said, I had to move in a dexterous manner,” Brelyna continued primly. “The others couldn’t get to me at once because, as I determined later, they were ambushed from behind just then by a pack of Falmer, which fully occupied their attentions. It transpired that, well, my footprints when I was running down the road left a trail. The Chaurus eggs, you know. My footprints glowed in the dark, and stank, too. The Falmer don’t have sight, but they followed the smell well enough. Mashed Chaurus eggs give off a very acrid odor. Very distinctive.

“So by the end of it, when the whole fracas was quite finished, the others came running to me, full of concern about my well-being I’m sure, and found me standing in the middle of a scene of absolute carnage. My robe was covered with Giant blood, Chaurus ichor and Dwemer oil. The smell was bearable after hours of washing in the river, but only just.

“The Dragonborn didn’t allow me to sleep by myself when we made camp, insisting that it wasn’t safe, and so they all took turns sharing a tent with me until the whole adventure was done. I had to get rid of my robes after that, as soon as it was feasible. There was just no saving it. And… well… I’ve never been able to look at Chaurus eggs in quite the same way, ever since. Horrible things.

“As a side note, I was the party’s designated cook, you know. I quite enjoy cooking. And I’d been using Chaurus eggs in various ways for my recipes, since there were so very many of them lying around in Blackreach. The others were getting a bit sick of it after a while, and after this… incident… they were quite adamant that they never wanted to taste Chaurus eggs in their food again. As you might expect, I was quite happy to oblige.

“And on top of all that, we never did find that sprig of Crimson Nirnroot.”

Luaffyn’s laughter was like a shaft of sunlight breaking through a thunderhead. “Oh, my word,” she was saying. “My word. That certainly isn’t the version I learned to sing!”

“Say, did the Dragonborn ever say what she was doing with all that Crimson Nirnroot?” Lydia wondered.

Brelyna blinked. “I… don’t recall. She wanted a goodly quantity for someone… but I wasn’t told who, and I never asked. Must have been for a good reason.”

“Sometimes… when I close my eyes at night… I can still hear that frightful sound.” Lydia shuddered.

“Which sound? The chittering of Chaurus? The roars of a raging Giant? The hiss of a scalding steam blast from a Dwemer Centurion?”

Lydia’s voice dropped to a hushed whisper. “That awful sound… of humming Nirnroot.” She essayed reproducing that sound with her vocal chords. “Wee-ow… Waaoow…”

Again, despite everything, Luaffyn had to choke back laughter. It really was good, Brelyna thought, to see the way levity displaced despondency.

But in the small hours of the night, Brelyna was awakened by Luaffyn’s muffled sobbing. She lay miserably in her own bedroll as a few feet away, the bereaved Dunmer mother crooned soft wordless tunes, singing her grief to the stars.

The Magna-Ge, Brelyna thought. Star-Orphans. The stars, as everyone knew, were holes left in the veil that surrounded Nirn by the Children of Magnus who fled to Aetherius shortly after the creation of Nirn. All that was left of those Anuic spirits was the light marking their passage, their escape. Could they hear Luaffyn’s song wafting up to them, crossing the unfathomable distance from Mundus to Aetherius? It was a comforting conceit to imagine they could.

Brelyna lay still and listened as Luaffyn quietly gave voice to her sorrow until morning finally broke.


	3. Chapter 3

As they cantered along the huge causeway bridge that led to the ancient gates of Windhelm, Brelyna muttered a small spell to increase her powers of personal persuasion and convey an air of authority. In this particular city, she suspected she would need it, Voice of the Dragonborn or not.

Luaffyn’s lassitude of the past week was gone, replaced by a barely-restrained energy – almost the battle-fury of a Shield Maiden before a clash of arms. Brelyna marked the way Luaffyn gripped the reins, and the tightness of her jaw. She would need to muster all the diplomacy and tact she could to counteract the rawness of Luaffyn’s emotions.

The gate guards, a pair of Nord men, waved them on through – bowing a shade more respectfully to Lydia than to herself, Brelyna could not help noting. They took no notice of Luaffyn, sparing her barely a glance. Just a scant few years ago, Brelyna thought, these same guards might have been guilty of openly accosting Dunmer citizens going about their business, harassing them or worse. But discerning eyes could see that what was once overt had simply gone to ground, become more subtle and correspondingly harder to root out.

After their horses were stabled and watered, Brelyna determined to go directly to the Palace of the Kings, to present her credentials to the Jarl as soon as possible. It was not only a matter of courtesy; it would smooth the way for her investigation considerably. Time was not on her side in this matter.

On the steps leading up to the huge stone edifice, they met a Nord man coming down the other way, who stopped short when he saw their party. His face became wreathed in dismay. “Oh, Luaffyn,” he breathed, as they closed the distance. “Oh, girl, foolish girl, what have you done…”

Luaffyn bared her teeth in a rictus grin. “Good morning, Torsten,” she said. “You wouldn’t speak on my behalf before Steward Lonely-Gale or the Jarl. So I’ve brought someone who _can_ speak. Whose voice cannot be silenced.”

“We looked for you all over. We didn’t know where you’d gone, girl. You might’ve been eaten by wolves for all we knew! I’m just glad to see you safe, but you have to stop this foolishness. This…” Torsten trailed off as his gaze swept over his daughter-in-law’s companions, his mouth working soundlessly. 

Brelyna Maron gave Torsten a cool gaze laden with what she hoped was calm authority. “Do I have the honor to be addressing Torsten, patron of the great clan Cruel-Sea?”

“Y-Yes, m’lady.” Torsten’s gaze jerked away from Lydia as if he were taken by surprise. He’d been looking intently at Lydia and making ready to direct his next words at the housecarl. “And you are…”

“I am Brelyna Maryon, from the College of Winterhold, and compatriot of the Dragonborn. I have been tasked by the Dragonborn to seek all due redress for the injustice suffered by this woman, Luaffyn Llothas, a member of your household by marriage and by law. For this purpose, I have been made the Voice of the Dragonborn; at the appointed time, I shall Speak with her Voice, to reveal truth and render such judgement as I deem appropriate. Until that time, I solemnly charge you, Torsten Cruel-Sea, to give me all the assistance I require and to abjure all speech or action that would impede me, so that my duty to the Dragonborn and to justice may be fulfilled.”

Brelyna hoped her formulaic pronouncement would have the intended effect. Before leaving Heljarchen Hall she had hurriedly glanced through some scrolls chronicling some ancient legal cases – by Azura, there had been a lot of them! The ancient Nords were a surprisingly litigious people. Using several of the more well-known legal declarations of advocacy as a template, Brelyna had cribbed together the speech she had just given the poor overawed Torsten. It was a tricky thing, invoking tradition when in fact being the Voice of the Dragonborn was still very much an unprecedented thing in Skyrim. She was appealing to the Nord respect for ancient custom, while at the same time setting out into unexplored territory. Tricky, tricky.

On Torsten it seemed to be working. His eyes had grown very wide by the end of her speech, and he was now bobbing his head jerkily, but readily enough. “Yes, of course, err… Brelyna Maryon. We’ll do what we can for you, but I fear your time – and that of the Dragonborn’s – has been wasted.” He darted a hard look at Luaffyn. “By Ysmir, you’ve really gone and done it,” he growled. “There was no call to go banging on the Dragonborn’s door!”

“Yes, there was, Torsten,” Luaffyn hissed back in reply. “My Llevana will have justice.”

“You’ve gone and caused trouble for the Dragonborn herself, all for nothing!”

“Her Voice will be the judge of that now.”

“Brelyna Maryon… err… my lady? Muthsera?”

“Just Brelyna will do, Torsten.”

“Right, right. Brelyna… listen, I’m sorry that you’ve been made to come all this way for nothing. It was a tragedy, right enough, and we’re all still very sad about it. It’s been a… raw time for us, I’m sure you understand. And Luaffyn’s grief is very understandable. But the baby… we think she died accidentally, you see? Who would murder her like that, in our farmhouse, a babe who’s done nothing to anyone? What vile scum would stoop so low, and yet leave the rest of the farm untouched and unharmed? We think the poor girl died in her sleep. Who knows what the problem could’ve been? It happens sometimes to the strongest of babes. Or to the most loving of mothers. We all know these things happen. No one is blaming you, Luaffyn!”

“You all are. You just don’t admit it. I accuse your son, Grimvar, of the deed.”

Torsten’s face colored. “That’s _enough_ of that, girl. You’ve gone far enough with that wild accusation. I can make so much allowance for your grief, and no more. Enough, I say.”

To Brelyna, he said, more respectfully, “Brelyna, she accuses my son and her husband Grimvar, but I just don’t believe it’s possible, in any case. My son, he’s a good boy, a good provider. He’s always been good to her, just ask her; when she’s calmed down and in possession of her senses again she’ll agree. They’ve been happy in each other for a long time. She really doesn’t want to do this right now, you see, it’s just that her reason has been sore beset by her woes.”

“I begin to see,” Brelyna said mildly.

Torsten’s eyes lit up with hope. “Yes, you see. You’ll want to speak to the Jarl, of course. But let Luaffyn come with me now, back to her family. None of us blame her. We all grieve with her. If she’ll just be a little more patient, and less hard on herself… get over her sorrow. And talk to poor Grimvar again. He didn’t kill the babe, I’d stake my life on it. Please advise her, one Dunmer woman to another, maybe? Tell her not to rush into something she may regret.”

“I begin to see,” Brelyna said more loudly, “why Luaffyn felt such a great need to walk for six days without rest to the very gates of Heljarchen Hall, all the way from her homestead at the far end of Eastmarch, to get a hearing. ‘We think.’ ‘Who knows.’ ‘I just don’t believe.’ What I hear is mere conjecture, and unsupported assertions. I have come to determine the _truth_, __Torsten Cruel-Sea. I am the Voice of the Dragonborn, and dragons cannot lie. Neither can justice.

“I shall go now and speak with the Jarl and his Steward. But I wish my investigation to commence forthwith. No judgement will be rushed into before all the pertinent facts are at our disposal, this I promise you. I require you now, Torsten, to go and bring Grimvar Cruel-Sea to me for questioning. The Dragonborn’s housecarl, Lydia, will assist you.” She nodded to Lydia, who nodded back grimly, wearing her best “I’m the muscle behind your words” look on her face. “I will be visiting your farmstead shortly – Hollyfrost Farm, isn’t it? Across the White River, on the opposite bank? Luaffyn will bring me there, and I shall meet with Grimvar for our interview. Do we have an understanding?”

Torsten’s shoulders slumped further with every word Brelyna said, and at the end all he could manage was a weak “Aye”. Brelyna watched them leave together, then motioned for Luaffyn to accompany her. It was a calculated decision, to send Lydia on this errand, but talking with Torsten had made Brelyna dubious about the odds of locating Grimvar for questioning. Lydia’s presence would at least send a strong signal that someone Official was looking into the matter and Taking Charge, so woe betide anyone who helped Grimvar elude questioning.

To Brelyna’s slight surprise, she and Luaffyn were ushered to the very front of the petitioners’ queue, once Brelyna had made it known who she was and in what capacity she had come. Many pairs of eyes, accompanied by upraised eyebrows, observed their approach to the high seat of Windhelm, the stone throne upon which kings used to sit, now occupied by Brunwulf Free-Winter. There were Nords, Imperials, a few Argonians, several fellow Dunmer, a lone Altmer woman, and even a pair of Khajiit, but all were made to give way before Brelyna and her companion.

In that great hall, Brelyna delivered a slightly modified version of her earlier speech, altering the relevant terms to fit the audience. Jarl Brunwulf was unstinting with his words of welcome, and his Steward Captain Lonely-Gale gave them his personal assurance that they had the freedom of all Windhelm. They would require only retroactive writs from the Steward in the event Brelyna needed to requisition any item, enter any holding or sequester any person. She could do any and all of that as she deemed needful, in other words.

These were very wide powers indeed that they were granting to her. Brelyna began to truly feel for the first time just what it was to be the Dragonborn’s Voice. The weight of all that power and attendant responsibility began to feel rather heavy about her own slender shoulders.

Her first stop would have to be the Hall of the Dead, where Llevana’s body had been interred. This was Skyrim, after all, where almost everyone followed Imperial funerary customs. Apart from some rather atavistic communities in the wilds, few Nords built cairns and crypts like their ancient warrior ancestors did; Dunmer in Skyrim, obviously, had no ancestral tombs in this land and did not cremate their dead to return them to the earth. This was fortunate for Brelyna’s purposes, of course.

If this investigation had to be done on Solstheim, or anywhere in Morrowind, Brelyna reflected, the body would already be a pile of ashes, and some form of Conjuration magic would have to be performed to get what information there was from the departed spirit of the deceased baby. Even if the child’s soul could not speak, there were still ways to establish such basic facts as the cause of death.

But of course, here in Skyrim such options were completely out of the question. Nords and Imperials alike tended to get very _tetchy_ about anything that reeked of necromancy. No, it was not to be thought of. Brelyna would have to arrive at the truth by the slow accretion of facts and details, using them to build a foundation of evidence upon which to ultimately erect her conclusions.

Before they left, the Steward came to speak privately with Luaffyn. His manner was gentle and apologetic.

“I hope you can understand the position I was in, Luaffyn,” he told her, with a nod of acknowledgement at Brelyna who was listening. “Your father-in-law and mother-in-law both assured me the death was a lamentable accident. They told me you were overwrought, not in your right mind. It seemed reasonable to me, and when Helgird took the body into the Hall of the Dead she gave no indication that anything was, well, suspicious. The prayers to Arkay were said, and we asked your mother and brother for any rites of your people they might wish to perform, but… they didn’t ask for anything special. 

“Under the circumstances, there simply wasn’t enough reason for me to allow your petition to the Jarl. But now that the lady Brelyna Maryon is here… speaking for the Dragonborn…” He sighed. “This must mean there’s something more to this than we’d all thought. I’m sorry, Luaffyn. I hope we find the truth of this. I hope Grimvar proves to be innocent, too. I knew the boy, when he was still just a child. I just… can’t imagine him doing anything like this. I hope… I hope you find peace, Luaffyn, at the end of this.”

Tight-lipped, Luaffyn nodded. Lonely-Gale looked uneasy, but bowed his head slightly and withdrew.

The two Dunmer women walked in silence along the stony streets towards the cemetery and the Hall of the Dead. This was the oldest city in Windhelm; several Ages’ worth of history was imbued into its very stones. The palace had been raised by Ysgramor and his Five Hundred; the paved road they trod upon had seen the founding of the Ebonheart Pact; the sturdy walls had shaken with the fury of the Dragonborn, during the final battle of the Civil War. Some of the scorch marks from that battle could still be seen on the stone.

“Were you with her then?” Luaffyn suddenly asked, quietly.

“I’m sorry?”

“Were you with the Dragonborn? During the fall of Windhelm?”

The official Imperial name for that battle was, naturally, the Liberation of Windhelm. A glorious name for the battle during which the Stormcloaks had been broken forever and the miscreant Ulfric had been turned into a pulpy mess, barely recognizable as a head on a pike. Of course, the actual residents of Windhelm who had borne the brunt of the battle would think of it somewhat differently.

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Brelyna said. “I was.”

She had been there. She, like all the others, had stood in dumbfounded amazement as the Dragonborn ended the war in her inimitable way. The sky had darkened with her rage. Thunderclaps had sent hardened warriors to their knees, clapping their hands to their ears in pain and cowering like children. Lances of lightning had struck again and again, scoring earth and stone and flesh alike. And the dragons… oh, the dragons. The dragon wings, like night, had overspread the city.

And through it all, the Dragonborn’s Shouts could be heard, reverberating in every bone in every person’s body. Never before had Skyrim witnessed such fury. Never again had the Dragonborn unleashed it. The carnage, the obliteration… the screaming Stormcloaks falling to their knees and weeping for mercy, frightened beyond reason that their own treasured symbol, their cultural hero, had raised her arm against them… the Imperial Legions kneeling and acclaiming her, pride warring with terror on their thousands and thousands of pale clammy faces…

If she had wanted to, the Dovahkiin could have become Dragonborn Empress there and then. The Legions would have followed her into the marbled jaws of Oblivion.

“Were you… in the city?” Brelyna asked carefully.

“I was hiding with what seemed like half the city inside Candlehearth Hall. It was packed so tightly in there, we could hardly move or breathe. The city was burning – we could see and smell it through the windows. The Imperials were running through the streets, hacking down any Stormcloaks they came across. We could hear the dragons. Hear their Shouts. But people seemed to believe that Candlehearth Hall would be a place safe from the Dragonborn’s wrath, for some reason. I suppose, in the event, they were right.”

“I can imagine a little of what it must have been like.”

“Surely not. I’m sure you’re inured to such things, having been her companion for so long.”

“Not so. We’ve had adventures, yes, but the Battle of Windhelm was… something else. It was war. I think even our ancestors at the Battle of Red Mountain would’ve been awed to see what happened at Windhelm. As for being inured… do you know, the first time a dragon attacked the College of Winterhold, I hid in my quarters like all the other novices? We were terrified out of our minds. We’d never expected to see one, let alone be attacked by one.”

“Was she there at the time?”

“No. The College faculty did everything they could, but several got hurt before the dragon was driven off. That was before I met the Dragonborn, before she came to our gates. I know… I know this doesn’t really compare to what it must’ve been like, during the Battle of Windhelm. It’s not really the same thing. But I just want to say, I know a little of what it feels like to be frightened, to feel helpless.”

“I’ve felt that way for most of my life,” Luaffyn said, her voice barely above a whisper.

To that, Brelyna could make no suitable reply. They walked on in silence for a time.

Brelyna reflected that at least part of the reason the Dragonborn’s name carried so much weight in Windhelm was, well, fear. Some people in Skyrim had received from the Dragonborn only kindness and compassion, and so thought of her only with love and utmost respect. Others thought of her with unmitigated fear. And perhaps some nursed some unresolved grudge or cause for resentment, especially in the city she had ravaged a few years ago. Brelyna reminded herself that she would have to be more careful and discerning when meeting other citizens, from this point forth. The cooperative – even deferential – attitude Torsten, Brunwulf and Lonely-Gale had displayed so far could not be taken for granted.

Then Luaffyn suddenly began speaking, as if floodgates had opened.

“It got better for a while, after Grimvar began courting me. He’d just passed the cusp of adulthood as the Nords reckon these things. He was always fond of his old nurse, Idesa Sadri. I suppose that could have been why he was predisposed to find me attractive. He came often to hear me sing, and sometimes he would offer me a gift of some sort. My favorites were the little figurines he made with his own hands – did you know he’s very good with woodwork? He seems to have a real gift for it. I told you he’d made the cradle himself, didn’t I? And all the toys too. He has a marvelous eye for detail, and such gentle, deft hands. Not like those of a farmer at all…”

“Could you tell me about your relationship with his family?”

“It has been… difficult, but not impossible. Torsten treats me like a child – he forgets I’m older than he is! But… he means well. He never spoke against me, or our marriage. Publicly, at least, he was extremely supportive. They made our wedding bigger than it had to be, you know? Oh, it was quite a joyous affair, but it was far more lavish than anything I’d expected. Or wanted. The Jarl himself was an honored guest.

“I’m not oblivious to politics. I know there was a reason to play up our marriage – we were going to be a sort of model for Jarl Brunwulf’s new society. You know what I mean? A new regime, a new era of harmony between Nord and, well, non-Nord. Something to fling in the face of the Sons of Skyrim, as a gesture of defiance, maybe.”

Brelyna blinked. “I’m sorry… who? Sons of Skyrim?” Wasn’t the phrase a form of shorthand for the entire Nord race? But Luaffyn had said it with a peculiar inflection.

“I suppose they’re not known anywhere outside Eastmarch Hold. They haven’t extended their repulsive reach quite that far yet, I suppose, though I’ve heard they have a Kynesgrove chapter now. They’re not Stormcloak renegades, but they might as well be. They say they’re a civic movement, a group of ‘concerned citizens’ who want to ‘safeguard the continued welfare of Skyrim’s native sons and daughters’ or something like that. They hate us as much as they ever did, but at least now there are laws and ordinances against walking about our streets in the Gray Quarter at night, harassing us by yelling vile insults and imprecations. They still let their narrow-minded hatred show in other ways, though.”

“I think I remember their sort…” Brelyna said slowly.

“Anyway, I’m sorry to digress. You were asking about my relationship with the Cruel-Seas. It’s… acceptable. They haven’t mistreated me. I’m not abused. Torsten’s wife, Hillevi, doesn’t say much to me, but we live together without too much in the way of strife.”

“I see. I will want to speak with them, of course, later today.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. My mother and brother will be on the farm as well. When I… left them… they were building a shack to stay in. A sort of addition to the farmhouse, but not connected.”

While they were speaking, they had been walking among rows of ivy-strewn gravestones and sarcophagi, and the odd mausoleum or two. Brelyna looked up and realized they had arrived. This was the entrance to the Hall of the Dead, inside which the body of the infant Llevana had been temporarily interred.

Luaffyn had fallen silent, and was looking at the ground. There was nothing Brelyna could think of to say at this juncture. And so, taking her cue from the distant Dragonborn, whose Voice she now had to be, she said nothing.

The two women stepped into the Hall of the Dead.


	4. Chapter 4

Brelyna stood stock-still, open-mouthed with astonishment.

“Wasn’t quite what you were expecting, eh?” Helgird said, a wry grin twisting her mouth. “Took me by surprise too, when I heard. Like everyone else, I wanted to see for myself. But sadly, unlike everyone else… I did.” She shook her head ruefully.

“I’m sorry, muthsera,” Luaffyn said, standing behind her. “I should’ve remembered to say something.”

“No… no, that’s quite all right. I’m sorry, it’s just… surprising.”

They were standing over the body of Llevana, Luaffyn’s child, daughter to House Cruel-Sea of Eastmarch and House Llothas of Mournhold.

She was not, in point of fact, a Dunmer baby. She was a Nord baby.

Brelyna’s mind raced, as she called to mind all she knew of racial phylogeny, which she knew was a woefully sparse field of study. This occurrence was rare, yes, but not entirely unheard of. But exceedingly rare. In the vast majority of such cases, the offspring was the race of the mother, but gained some traits from the father.

Llevana appeared, in all respects, to be a well-formed Nord baby of the female persuasion. The moribund aspects aside, she was beautiful, with a delicate facial bone structure. And she was little. So little.

Luaffyn turned aside, burying her face in her hands and leaning against a pillar for support. Her shoulders heaved with silent sobs. Brelyna mentally braced herself; there was no time for her to be maudlin. She had to be efficient and incisive as she went about her needful business.

The smell was only faint – Helgird had done her job well. Brelyna had seen and smelled much worse. Moreover, as the sardonic old Nord crone had remarked earlier, it was a good thing in some respects that Skyrim was such a cold place – bodies took a long time to rot even when left aboveground and out in the open. Burials often had to wait for the ground to thaw sufficiently, in many places.

“Were there any signs of broken bones or other injuries? Contusions?” Brelyna asked quietly.

“None that I saw.”

“Have all the innards been removed?”

“Aye. As my job requires.”

“Did you notice anything suspicious about them?”

Helgird scratched the side of her nose. “Nothing that I could see plainly with my eyes,” she said, in a low voice. “But, look here… I think you’ll be interested in a couple of things. Do you mark the skin tone?”

“Yes. Is this color normal for cases of asphyxiation?”

“Yes and no. Hard to tell, sometimes, without other clues. If you please, Brelyna, look inside her mouth.”

Brelyna carefully parted the baby’s lips and teeth. “Oh,” she said. “Again, I ask: does this body present the normal signs of asphyxiation?”

Helgird darted a look over at Luaffyn, who had moved off into another section of the Halls, and was out of earshot. “I get the occasional hanged corpse in here sometimes,” she said conversationally. “But not often. Usually, bandits who get their comeuppance out in the wilds stay in the wilds, if you take my meaning. Not a lot of room for them among the honored dead. But in a city this size, you get the occasional hanging victim. Some wife of a former Stormcloak decides she can’t bear to be without her husband and thinks she can join him in Sovngarde. Some man can’t see his way clear to a bearable life and takes an easier way out. You get bulging eyes, blackened tongues. The usual signs of strangulation.”

“What about smothering?”

“Oh, yes. A few months ago, ugly bit of business. Son decided he wanted to end his ailing mother’s suffering. Smothered her in her bed with a pillow.” Helgird shook her head. “Not the way I’d want to be done in. If anyone were minded to do me in.” She snorted derisively at the thought.

“Your point?” Brelyna pressed.

“An overlain baby doesn’t have tongue discoloration. With no mark of violence on any part of her, like say, around her neck, there’s no reason for the tongue to look this way.”

“And you didn’t raise this point of suspicion with the Jarl?”

“Not my job, if you will forgive me for being blunt. I don’t ask about the ‘why’ of any body that passes through here. Anyone who’s anyone who dies in Windhelm is sent here at some point, and my work is to get their bodies ready for burial and pray to Arkay or Shor for the safe passage of their souls. This was sad, any baby’s passing is sad, but believe me or not as you will, this was not the only baby to pass through these halls this past month. Still… now that you’re here…”

Helgird handed Brelyna a pair of calipers and an embalming tool with a sharpened edge, and gave her a knowing look.

“If you need a container, I have some clay jars lying around somewhere…”

“That won’t be necessary… I brought my own vials. Thank you.”

Helgird nodded. “Right. Right. You came prepared, I see.”

As Brelyna discreetly and carefully cut out a portion of Llevana’s tongue, offering up silent prayers in her mind to ask for the departed soul’s forgiveness and forbearance, Helgird stood by, positioning herself so that Luaffyn over in the next chamber would not need to see what was going on. “It was definitely the talk of the city, you know. Their marriage. And later on, how the baby wasn’t a gr- I mean, wasn’t Dunmer. There were also other rumors about the poor child. Unlike others, I can now see the truth of those rumors for myself. And so can you. Take a look at her eyes, why don’t you.”

Brelyna narrowed her eyes suspiciously, but did as Helgird suggested. She couldn’t help herself – she gasped audibly in surprise.

“The talk of the city,” Helgird repeated quietly.

The Nord baby possessed a pair of perfectly-formed iridescent crimson Dunmer eyes.

**

Brelyna stepped out of the White Phial, hoping she was successfully concealing her inner turmoil. Her very soul was rebelling against the notion that somehow, someone had brought themselves to feed deadly poison to a baby. A baby!

“Could it have been accidental?” she’d asked Quintus Navale just a few minutes ago, hoping against hope. “A tincture of nightshade is sometimes taken as an aid to restful slumber, is it not? Could it not have been meant as a soporific?”

The alchemist had shaken his head regretfully. “This dose would’ve been deadly even to a fully-grown adult. I simply cannot believe that anyone could’ve done this in ignorance. You’re trained in the alchemical arts as well, aren’t you? Here, you can see for yourself. For _this_ much nightshade extract to still be present in this bit of tongue…” And after a full inspection of what their apparatuses could reveal, Brelyna was forced to agree with Quintus.

Llevana’s death was now a confirmed murder… by poison, of all things. Hard news for a mother to hear. Hard news, too, for any messenger to bear.

Luaffyn was in the market square, conversing with a raven-haired Nord woman outside the blacksmith’s shop. Probably the blacksmith herself, judging by the sheer size of the muscles on those arms and shoulders – she wore only a blacksmith’s apron and a rough pair of trousers, leaving her back completely bare. This woman looked strong enough to give even Lydia a good contest. At Brelyna’s approach, Luaffyn looked up, and the brawny woman turned around, frowning.

“Take heart and stay strong, Luaffyn,” the Nord said, placing a hand on Luaffyn’s shoulder and squeezing encouragingly. Luaffyn put her hand atop the woman’s and smiled in acknowledgement.

“Thank you, Hermir,” she said.

“If it really was Grimvar, I hope they catch him and string him up by the toes,” Hermir growled. She then glanced at Brelyna, and a faint look of dislike appeared on her face. Nodding a final farewell to Luaffyn, the blacksmith disappeared into the interior of the smithy without so much as a word of greeting for Brelyna.

“Friend of yours?”

“An old friend. Hermir Strong-Heart took over the city forge after her mentor Oengul’s heart gave out last year. She still takes care of the old man, though he rarely leaves his bed nowadays. She now does all the blacksmithing for the Jarl… and she’s none too happy about it.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Political… differences of opinion.”

“Ah. She was a supporter of the Stormcloak Rebellion, I take it.”

“One of the staunchest. She was captivated by the vision Ulfric painted with his words of a free and independent Skyrim. Like so many others were. She was always my friend… but I think she never quite understood what Ulfric’s reign would’ve meant for me or those like me. Like us. She bore us no ill-will, she would say often – in fact, she’d keep saying that I was her friend, and that fact alone should count for much. I could never seem to make her understand that while she and I could get along, one woman with another, the social order she was in favor of would have seen me becoming less and less than her with every passing day.” Luaffyn sighed. “We don’t talk about politics very much. I suppose that’s why we’re still friends. She has… complicated… feelings about the Dragonborn.”

“Ah?”

“I believe her exact words are ‘Every time I think of her my blood boils,’ actually.”

“Ah.” Brelyna scuffed her foot against the cobblestones. “I suppose she knew me, then. Or at least, who I’m supposed to be.”

“I told her.” Luaffyn’s gaze sharpened. “You’re not just ‘supposed’ to be the Voice of the Dragonborn,” she said softly. “You _are._ You _have_ to be.” Left unspoken were the words _I need you to be,_ but Brelyna heard them nonetheless.

Brelyna coughed. “Yes. Certainly. Thank you for the reminder.” She coughed again, uncomfortably. “On that note…”

Luaffyn took the news better than Brelyna had expected, although there was a definite tightening around her eyes and mouth. “It would have choked her off,” she whispered. “Just as though she had been overlain, or placed wrongly in her cradle. Whoever did this wanted to make it look as if it was my fault, my negligence as a mother.” Her fists were clenched tightly by her sides.

“I spoke to Quintus Navale, at the White Phial. He keeps meticulous records – I was able to quickly make copies,” Brelyna said, patting her satchel. _Thank you, Master Neloth, for teaching me that particular way of using Illusion magic… now please get out of my mind, will you, you old stoat?_ “I’ll have quite a lot of reading to do in the days to come, to track down any purchases of Nightshade extract. There’re quite a few more shops selling alchemical supplies in the city that I will have to visit soon…”

“I’ll help. I can read fairly well.”

“That would be helpful indeed. Thank you. I’d conscript Lydia as well, except she complains that she gets a headache when she has to read anything longer than a few verses of a skaldic poem. Speaking of which – shall we head to the farm now? Lydia should have something to report by the time we reconvene there.”

Luaffyn nodded, and they set off together, leaving the Stone Quarter and heading directly for the main gates.

To get to Hollyfrost Farm, they needed to exit the city proper, cross the causeway bridge and walk northeast for a considerable distance up a gentle incline, in the direction of the Dunmeth Pass leading eventually to Morrowind. On their left, the icy waters of the White River flowed slowly towards the Sea of Ghosts, lapping gently at the hulls of assorted boats and trade ships at rest in Windhelm’s bustling harbor. On their right, patches of farmland nestled amidst the foothills of the Velothi Mountains.

They saw the approaching figures coming a long way off. Brelyna noted that the party had grown; Lydia and Torsten were now joined by two other Nord men.

“Is one of them Grimvar?”

“No, muthsera.”

_As I thought._ Brelyna would not have bet a single septim on any easy outcome to her manhunt. “Do you know them? And please, call me Brelyna,” she added, perfunctorily.

“The shortest one, on the right, that’s Tulvur, the farm manager. Beside him, that’s…” Luaffyn frowned. “That’s Stenvar. He’s a mercenary. Odd… he used to be a regular at the inn. Candlehearth, I mean. But last year, he disappeared. I heard some vague rumors involving some cult of Boethiah up in the mountains, to the east… I don’t know why he’s here now.”

As the distance between the two parties closed, Brelyna could see the sour look on Lydia’s face. When they were near enough, Torsten made as if to speak, but Brelyna cut him off with an upraised hand, and turned to the housecarl. “Lydia?”

“Bolted,” she replied laconically. “Almost certainly had warning.” She grimaced at the two Nord newcomers, who looked away guiltily.

“I see.” Brelyna looked at Torsten steadily, and waited.

“I… We… On our way to the farm, we met Tulvur, that’s my man here, whom I sent to fetch Grimvar…” he began to say.

“Tulvur saw us coming a long way off, and ran off behind the farmhouse,” Lydia supplied, folding her thick arms across her chest.

“He… well… he was busy, with his work. I suppose he didn’t see us coming, and he came out later when we approached, so that was when I called out to him to fetch my boy.”

“Called out very loudly. Shouted it. Like a warning.”

Torsten flushed. “This… this man here, Stenvar, we know him well. He’s a sellsword of good reputation. Been up and down all over Eastmarch. Knows this area well. We were lucky to meet him, as we were searching for my son, and he’s a fair tracker. He volunteered to search along with us, and I thought we’d need the extra help since we were getting perilously close to known bandit dens…”

“The young man’s gone fugitive, almost certainly with one of those bandit gangs,” Lydia told Brelyna. “Stenvar might be with them.”

The hulking Nord man flushed. “There’s no call for wild accusations, woman,” he growled. “Ysmir’s beard, I’ve a good mind to teach you a lesson…”

“Ysmir,” Lydia cut him off with an icy look, “doesn’t have a beard. Not anymore, anyway. Shall I take you to meet her, so you can see for yourself?” Her eyes glinted.

Stenvar turned pale and went silent, though his eyes still smoldered with umbrage.

Brelyna said coldly, “Do you know what the penalty is for hindering the Voice of the Dragonborn, Torsten?”

“N-No, but…”

“Neither do I, Torsten. Funny thing, isn’t it? I’m not terribly keen to find out. Are you?”

“I… I’m not… that is, I assure you, you have our fullest cooperation…”

“So it’s true. Your actions prove it. Your son is guilty,” Luaffyn hissed. “He’s a _murderer.”_

“He isn’t,” Torsten insisted, sounding almost as if he were pleading. He certainly looked the picture of sincerity as he addressed Luaffyn. “Please, girl. He couldn’t have done it. You know him. He’s my… he’s my son. And your husband. I… I have wanted nothing but happiness for the both of you ever since I heard from Grimvar’s own lips that he had fallen in love with you.” Now he _did_ sound as if he was pleading. “Grimvar’s innocent. Shor’s bones, I swear he is. _He would never hurt his own daughter!_ And he could tell you himself… after you’ve calmed down a bit. He _will_ return. I swear it. Please, Luaffyn. Listen to me.”

“If I may interject, Torsten,” Brelyna said, for Luaffyn was speechless and made no reply, “Grimvar has no reason to run and hide if he is truly innocent. I only wish to question him, and hear his side of the story. I fear greatly that his sudden and unexplained absence does not inspire confidence in the proposition that he is guiltless.”

Her gaze swept over them, then alighted on Torsten again. “Pass him the word. Through Stenvar here, or Tulvur, or whoever has his ear right now. Grimvar Cruel-Sea must come and present himself to me, and tell me his story. He will receive a fair hearing. It is the Voice of the Dragonborn who promises this. But he must turn himself in by this evening. Otherwise… we will have to hunt him down. The entire complement of the city guard is at my disposal. We will find him. And when we do – not if, but when – we will likely end his life, because he will have proved his guilt with his cowardice.”

This was met with silence. Tulvur looked down guiltily at his boots. Stenvar’s jaw worked, but he stood still with fists clenched by his sides. And Torsten…

Torsten lowered his head. “Aye,” he whispered. “It shall be done as you say.”

They parted ways. Torsten and Stenvar returned to the city to conduct their own matters of business, although Brelyna would have bet every last septim that the matters under discussion would have to do with Torsten’s fugitive son. At Brelyna’s firmly-worded request, Tulvur led them up the road leading to the farmhouse.

_Grimvar Cruel-Sea, you thrice-damned fool. I’d just about exculpated you in my reckoning. An honest interview would’ve sufficed for the rest. You’ve been given bad advice, young man._

Bad advice, from bad company. Just how much could a young Nord man be blamed for the company he kept?


	5. Chapter 5

The farmhouse was large, and looked well-appointed. Despite Luaffyn’s earlier description of the typical Nord layout, the single-room interior was structured in such a way that walls served well as partitions, and privacy could be had by the house’s many occupants. Brelyna looked around carefully – later, she would have to ask Lydia for her own Nord perspective, but from all she could see at the moment, this was a good home. A “fine steading”, as the Nords would put it.

The more she saw and heard, the less it made sense for Grimvar to be the murderer of his own baby. Up until a week ago, he was a young Nord man in Skyrim with everything that he could have possibly wanted: a proud heritage, well-off parents, a beautiful and loving wife, prospects for the future, comfort and security, a budding family of his own. Everything she could see in the farmhouse bespoke a warm hearth, a home that had been kept with love and care. Could the strain of a crying baby really suffice to drive a man to tear all this apart with his bare hands – the same hands that had crafted that finely-made cradle in the corner, and all the intricate wooden toys scattered around it on the floor?

In the previous Era, before the Oblivion Crisis, the most likely culprits would have been the Daedra, or Daedric devotees, especially those worshipping what the Dunmer people called the Four Corners of the House of Troubles. Notably, madness and insanity were the province of Sheogorath, the Madgod; betrayal of trust and breaking of loving bonds would fall within the demesne of Mephala, the Black-Handed Webspinner. But it had been many hundreds of years since the sacrifice of Martin Septim. The easy answers no longer came so readily to hand. The causes of such painful events had to be found in deeper and murkier places than Oblivion – within the hidden depths of the heart.

Hillevi Cruel-Sea and Radene Llothas were both available for her to interview, and so Brelyna was offered a seat at the fire. Luaffyn would wait outside, some distance from the farm. Lydia stood behind Brelyna, silently emanating stoic strength and solidity, but she would likely take no part in the proceedings. Brelyna hesitated to think of them as “interrogations” though they were, in effect, just that. At this juncture, every person connected with the farm was a suspect.

_The nightshade doesn’t even have to come from one of the local stores. It might conceivably have come from anywhere. Balance of probability, that is all I have to go on at the moment. Method, motive, opportunity – the first is established, the second is crucial, and the third… I must narrow the window of possibility, somehow. But how?_

Grimvar’s mother entered first, tight-lipped, and took a seat across the fireplace from Brelyna without any prompting - as well she might, Brelyna reflected, since this was her own house. She could expect no excess of deference from Hillevi, she was sure. The Nord matriarch was lean but sturdy of frame – a typical Nord woman in her fifties, perhaps nearing sixty. Her face was work-worn and linked with wrinkles about her eyes and lips – not laugh lines. Her graying hair fell loosely about her neck. No interest in adopting the latest Imperial fashions, Brelyna noted, unlike roughly half the Nord women of varying ages she had passed in the streets of Windhelm earlier.

“So,” Hillevi said, “my son’s accuser has questions for me.”

“You mistake me, Hillevi,” Brelyna replied evenly. “I am not an accuser, but an investigator. I am here to discover the truth of things, and establish my conclusions. Any punishment will have to be according to the law of the city, as decreed by the Jarl’s government.”

“We’ve all attested to the facts before our own Jarl. The baby’s death was an accident. Jarl Brunwulf himself ruled that it was likely just that and nothing more. Probably the result of negligence.” Hillevi’s lip curled. “Wouldn’t be surprised. In any case, we don’t need or want any outsiders poking into our private family affairs. Leave us to our grief.”

“Do you know where your son has gone, Hillevi?”

Hillevi’s lips compressed even further. “He has a right to go anywhere he wants. He is a true son of this land. It’s his birthright.” She fixed Brelyna with an icy stare. “It’s his land. Our land. And I’ll not sit here and listen to an outsider tarnish his good name with vile calumnies, and try to take away _his_ right to go anywhere in _his_ land. He’s a true Son of Skyrim! Slander him further and I’ll have you hauled up before the Jarl himself!”

Hillevi Cruel-Sea rose to her feet, just as Lydia uncrossed her arms and took a step forward. Brelyna raised an arm just in time to bar Lydia’s way.

“Hillevi,” she said, deliberately keeping her tone mild, “your family has suffered a loss. I grieve with you. Are you aware that your grief has been felt as far as Heljarchen Hall? Have you been told in what capacity I have been sent here, and by whom?”

Glittering gimlet eyes continued piercing her. “Yes,” Hillevi said at last, reluctantly. “I know.”

“I repeat, I am not here as an accuser. If your son is innocent, let him stand before me and tell me his story. He has no need to run or hide.”

“He also has no need to give account of himself to outsiders.”

_Elves, you mean. Dark Elves, specifically._ Brelyna could intuit the root cause of Hillevi’s hostility well enough. Hillevi was a True Nord. She wouldn’t know how to back down if her life depended on it.

If her son’s life depended on it.

With a weary sigh, Brelyna motioned for Lydia to stand back. To Hillevi, she said, “My ultimatum stands. The Jarl’s city guards are ready at my command to begin scouring the countryside for your son.”

“What reason does Brunwulf have to even accept the baby’s death as a killing, and not just the accident it clearly was?”

Brelyna noted the lack of an honorific in passing. When speaking to an outsider like Brelyna, and keen to emphasize her family’s connections in high places, Hillevi would be all “Jarl” this and “Jarl” that, but in her unguarded moments… “Mmm. As to that.” She closed her eyes briefly, and opened them again. “You will be interested to know that I have ascertained the true cause of death, in the case of the sadly deceased.”

Hillevi’s eyes widened, and she waited.

“Your granddaughter was poisoned.”

“How do you know this?”

“I have my methods.”

“Did you work your foul necromantic arts on my granddaughter?” Hillevi’s voice rose. “Did you taint her body with your foreign ways, you… Dunmer witch?”

Again, Brelyna had to restrain Lydia with a sharp gesture. “Does this come as news to you? Did you believe the baby – your granddaughter – had died of asphyxiation?” She watched Hillevi very carefully. She’d had it from Luaffyn that Hillevi Cruel-Sea was a wholesaler of herbs in addition to fresh produce and farm foodstuffs. Her hothouse was not too far away from the farm, but there was little point, Brelyna reckoned, in actually visiting it. It was almost certain that there would be nightshade growing inside, but that by itself sufficed to prove nothing.

“It… seemed to be the only explanation.” Hillevi blinked, and seemed suddenly unsteady on her feet. “What… what is your proof?”

“She shows the signs of nightshade poisoning. A small quantity, certainly more than enough to kill an infant, was fed to her through her mouth.”

For some long moments, Hillevi did not speak. And neither did Brelyna.

Then, Hillevi said, her voice tight and cold, “Then we will have vengeance upon the poisoner, whoever it may be.”

“I am here to see that justice is done.”

“What use do we have for your outlandish notions of justice, Elf?” Hillevi’s mouth twisted with derision.

“It is the Dragonborn’s own justice.”

_“Then let her come herself to dispense it!” _Hillevi’s face contorted with dyspeptic rage. “Aye, let her come herself. And let her also answer for the _injustice_ she has done to her people, while she’s at it. She should be here personally, shouldn’t she? Since Luaffyn saw fit to take this all the way to high-standing Heljarchen Hall. Instead… she sends you, in her stead. A _Dark Elf.”_

Hillevi turned and strode out of the farmhouse, slamming the door behind her.

Brelya settled back into her chair, slumping a little. Lydia cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Quite the character,” Brelyna muttered.

“Typical for my people, unfortunately. As you know.”

“Oh, I do know, very well. Part of that was bereavement, but part was… something else.”

“It was the war. Civil war is an ugly, ugly business.” Lydia leaned against the wall, crossing her arms again. “I have to say, I may be speaking out of place here, but I do wonder what the Dragonborn was thinking, sending you out here on this task. It’s not easy for your kind to deal with… my people. It’s worse out here in Eastmarch than in the other Holds, too. Ah, don’t mind me though. Just airing my thoughts.”

“Oh, don’t say that, Lydia,” Brelyna said, closing her eyes wearily. “Divines’ sakes, Lydia, we’re old comrades in arms. You’ve as much right to say anything as I do, about any of this. If you’ve anything to say, I want to hear it.”

“Actually, I _don’t _have as much right as you to speak about this matter. I quite literally don’t. _You_ are the Voice. Not me.” Lydia shrugged. “I’m just the brawn to your brain.”

“Thank you for the reminder,” Brelyna said dryly. “I had nearly forgotten.”

Just then, the door opened, and Tulvur poked his head in. He bobbed his head at Brelyna and Lydia.

“If you please, Mistresses, it’s Radene, Luaffyn’s mother, come to see you.” The two dogs – Tiber and Ysgramor, as they’d been introduced earlier much to Lydia’s barely-restrained mirth – were yelping and yapping just outside. They had been most upset at the arrival of strangers, and Brelyna couldn’t help but think that they were just a tad more suspicious of _her_ than of Lydia.

“Please, send her in.”

Tulvur disappeared, and a moment later Radene Llothas strode into the farmhouse.

Where Hillevi had been a formidable mistress of her hearth, Radene presented a certain savagery in her aspect. She was tall and spry. On her cheeks she bore tattoos – Brelyna gave a start. It had been quite a long time since she’d seen any Dunmer bearing the design of the False Tribunal… Brelyna had expected Luaffyn’s mother to be someone old enough to have lived through the Red Year. She hadn’t quite expected to encounter one of the true traditionalists; Radene Llothas had very likely lived under the reign of the Tribunal – Vivec, Almalexia and Sotha Sil – for many long years.

Radene’s thin lips curled in contempt as she stood there, ignoring the empty chair across from Brelyna. Unabashedly, she looked Brelyna up and down in an appraising manner, and spared Lydia no more than a brief dismissive glance.

Brelyna opted for tact and decorum. Rising to her feet, she gave a small bow. “Muthsera,” she said. “I grieve with you for your loss.”

Radene did not reply. Her jaw worked as she silently continued studying Brelyna.

The Dragonborn would’ve been able to cow this woman with a single meaningful look, Brelyna thought with a twinge of resentment. Silence was a potent weapon in the Dragonborn’s arsenal. How in Oblivion did she do it? Brelyna doubted she could muster an adequate amount of gravitas to beat a matriarch of her own people at her own game. No, silence from Brelyna at the moment would be nothing but awkward. Brelyna had other cards to play, other tools to use; she would have to make do.

“Your granddaughter, muthsera, was foully murdered indeed. This much I have ascertained. And as the Voice of the Dragonborn, here at your daughter Luaffyn’s behest, I must find the truth of the matter and lay it bare to all. I will need your help and cooperation, muthsera.”

“So it’s true?” Radene spoke. Her jaw still worked, as if she were a horse chomping at the bit, grinding away at something unpleasant between her teeth. “The baby was killed? It was no accident?”

“It’s true, yes.”

“The Nords wouldn’t hear of it,” Radene grated. “They dared cast aspersions upon my daughter. My daughter! They threw her case out of their court! They surely thought of my granddaughter as one of us, not one of _them._ Our lives don’t matter, here in this blasted land of ice demons and snow wraiths.” The rage burned in her scarlet eyes. “Only __true__ Nord lives matter in Skyrim.”

“There are some who behave as though that were true, yes,” Brelyna replied as calmly as she could. “But it is not so. Dunmer lives _do _matter, in Skyrim. Anywhere in Skyrim. And the Dragonborn, whom I serve and follow, has sent me to ensure that justice is done.” She was beginning to lose count of the number of times she’d had to affirm this.

“Nord justice. What use have we Dunmer for Nord justice?” Radene said, her voice thick and low. “The baby was Nord, yes, but she was still the child of a Dunmer mother. And her eyes… she had our eyes, girl. Did you know that? The child had our eyes.”

“Yes, I’ve had the chance to examine the body…”

“Speak of the dead with more respect, wretched girl.”

Brelyna felt anger coiling up within her. “I mean no disrespect, muthsera, but I will ask you to refrain from calling me ‘girl.’” _Or “wretched”._

“Am I not to call you what you are?” Radene lifted her chin scornfully. “You are a mere stripling. Younger even than my Luaffyn. This Dragonborn of yours, to have sent you… she must despise us, like the rest of these… _people.” _She practically spat the last word. “I spent my youth dancing among the silt-striders of Seyda Neen. I was courted in the mushroom forests of Sadrith Mora. I killed my first outlander in a tavern in Tel Aruhn before you were even born, _girl._ Your presence here, as a Nord lackey, is an insult. A Nord insult given to the Dunmer, an insult in which you are complicit. And you prattle on about Nord _justice!”_

“Mother.”

Luaffyn was standing in the doorway. “Mother. Come away. Please.”

“This wayward stripling and her Nord thug think to…”

“Mother. They are here to help me. To help us. Come away now. Please.”

For some long, silent moments Radene stood, eyes fixed upon Brelyna. Then she spoke, slowly, through clenched teeth.

“You must swear, upon Azura’s name, upon the long blade of Boethiah and the black hands of Mephala, you must swear that if it is the boy Grimvar who has done this thing… you will not allow him to get off lightly in the court of the Jarl. There is to be no weregild. Mark me well, Brelyna Maryon. There is no price that can be set upon the life of my granddaughter. Blood must answer for blood.”

Brelyna stayed silent. She could promise no such thing… but it seemed nothing else could assuage the volcanic wrath of Radene Llothas. _It seems likely, at least, that I can rule her out – unless all this is just a front…_

After some more long moments, Radene snorted, turned and left, leaving her disdain hanging like a miasma in the air. From outside, the canine declamations rose in intensity, a chorus of opprobrium.

“Foul beasts!” Radene’s voice could be heard, raging at Tiber and Ysgramor, returning their obloquy with her own. “Filthy curs! Get away from me!” Gradually the ruckus faded as Radene presumably left the vicinity.

Luaffyn stood, head bowed. “I’m sorry, Brelyna,” she said quietly. “She has never been an easy person to deal with, even at the best of times. And now…”

“I quite understand. It’s all right, Luaffyn. There’s no need to apologize on her behalf.”

These interviews had not gone well. They had yielded few clues, and only increased her own sense of burden. For the umpteenth time she asked herself: just what did the Dragonborn think she could do here? Brelyna didn’t want to disappoint her or Luaffyn, but she was beginning to think that perhaps she was making a hash of things. Not asking the right questions. Not going about things in the right way.

It was true that things usually came easily to Brelyna, so when they didn’t, her first impulse was to retreat and try viewing the problem from another angle. That had always seemed like the sensible thing to do, instead of mindlessly banging one’s head against an impenetrable wall. A Nord or Orc would do that, and perhaps some of the stodgier Imperials. But no; Brelyna had always thought of herself as more akin to the nimble-minded Khajiit, or the adaptable Bosmer.

Master Neloth had always roundly criticized her no matter what approach she took, she thought sourly. If she showed dogged persistence, he’d chastise her for lack of originality and rigid adherence to dogmatic methodology. If she tried a variety of creative solutions, he’d sniff and tell her to stick to the task at hand with the same dogged persistence he always ridiculed. Even now, she could imagine him barking with contemptuous laughter and hounding her with some snide comment or other about her inability to see what was right under her nose.

She froze. Her unconscious mind was nudging her about something. It had something to tell her, to bring to the forefront of her awareness. Something about… dogs…

The dogs!

“Luaffyn,” she said carefully. “I’d like you to think back to… that day. I need you to tell me something as well as you are able to recall it.”

“Y-yes, certainly.”

“Before you headed out to pick snowberries, do you recall where the dogs were? Tiber and Ysgramor?”

Luaffyn’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “They… they were tied to their posts, outside.”

Brelyna had seen the posts – not far from the farmhouse door. “And after you returned, were they still there?”

“Yes, they were.”

“Did they seem upset or excited by anything?”

“They… no, they weren’t. They seemed quite calm. Placid, even.”

“How are they usually, around you?’

“They took a while to get used to me at first, but that was years ago. They’re very friendly with people they know. They love Tulvur best, but they get along very well with me.”

“And with the rest of the family?”

“With the rest of the Cruel-Seas, yes. With any stranger they raise a loud fuss. It’s how they were trained, after all, as guard dogs.”

“And with your mother and brother? How long has it been since they moved onto the farm? Remind me, please.”

“Not several weeks past. About a month.”

“And with them, the dogs are…?”

“Still wary. On their guard. They don’t attack or threaten, but they still treat my mother and brother as outsiders.” Luaffyn was now looking intently at Brelyna.

“Yes. They certainly didn’t take kindly to us just now, eh, Lydia?”

“Right.” Lydia, too, was listening with deepening interest.

“Luaffyn… walk with me, will you please? I want you to show me where you said you were picking snowberries.”

The air was crisp. The permafrost crunched under their boots as they strode uphill at a steady pace. It didn’t take long for them to get to the clump of snowberry bushes that Luaffyn pointed out.

Brelyna turned around and looked back the way they came. She squinted. Across the river, the harbor of Windhelm and the silhouettes of the moored vessels could still be discerned. The shouts of the sailors and dockworkers could be heard, surprisingly clear across the intervening distance. She turned the other way, and looked up north and east. From somewhere further up the road, they could hear the rustling and snuffling of a snow fox. Then they saw it – almost a hundred feet ahead, the fox burst out of its concealment to chase a hare.

“Luaffyn,” Brelyna said, “what was the weather like when you came out here to pick snowberries?”

“It was a clear, still day, just like what we have now.”

“Not even a flurry?”

“Not on that day, no. I remember thinking it was a good time for me to go pick the berries. That’s why I did so.”

“So… if any stranger had approached the house, you would have heard the dogs.”

“Yes, of a certainty. But I heard nothing.”

Brelyna nodded to herself. This narrowed the field considerably. It still didn’t clear Grimvar… but the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to take clear shape, if they weren’t exactly falling into place yet.

“And approximately how long were you here?”

“I would say about half an hour.”

Long enough for the poisoner to move in, do the deed, and get out.

Brelyna nodded to herself again. _Method, motive, opportunity… two out of three just isn’t good enough. What could the motive possibly be? _

“The hour grows late,” she observes. “Let’s set up camp, Lydia. I have quite a lot of reading and thinking to do tonight.”

Luaffyn’s eyebrows rose. “Muthse- I mean, Brelyna,” she said, at Brelyna’s quelling look. “You are welcome to stay with us… the least we could do…”

It was a courteous offer, but somehow, Brelyna Maryon didn’t think it would be a particularly good idea to stay the night at Hollyfrost Farm. So she had to regretfully decline Luaffyn’s offer of hospitality, made on behalf of the Cruel-Seas.

“But we will be close by, if you should think of anything you need to tell us in a hurry,” she told Luaffyn. “We’ll be right beside the river, just over there. Won’t be hard to find.”

“I’ll go get our things from the stables,” Lydia sighed, and walked off down the road, back in the direction of Windhelm.

“Thanks, Lydia,” Brelyna called out.

Without looking back, Lydia waved in response. “I’m sworn to carry your burdens!” she yelled. The sound really did carry well in this place, Brelyna thought.

Brelyna thought longingly of the warm beds and rooms at Candlehearth Hall, or even the guest quarters at the Palace of the Kings. But if her intuition was correct… then camping out by the roadside, as any wayfarer might, would be the best thing for her to do, at least for this evening.

She fully expected that she would have an important visitor, soon enough.


	6. Chapter 6

Brelyna sat on the rock and waited.

She already had a merry little campfire blazing – with a quick muttered incantation and a little wave of her fingers she had set fire to a pile of gathered deadwood. Now she sat, enjoying the small waves of warmth caressing her face, and gazed out at the river surface. Little chunks of ice drifted along with the current. On the far bank, a small family of horkers frolicked, as much as such graceless animals were capable of frolicking. Their flippers propelled their ungainly bodies along the shoreline with surprising facility. In the water, they underwent a transformation, barreling under the surface and reappearing a surprising distance away, evincing remarkable swimming speed.

A little way downstream, Lydia was busying herself inspecting the line of fishing rods she’d set up earlier. A little while ago, Brelyna had caught her eyeing the horkers contemplatively, and she’d barely managed to dissuade Lydia from trying her strength of arm against the creatures for the promise of horker meat. It wasn’t as though they were running low on provender, after all!

She’d managed to talk Lydia into fishing instead. Already, Lydia’s efforts had yielded a pair of fat salmon, which the housecarl was currently regarding with an air of satisfaction. Later, Brelyna would see to roasting some potatoes. They could have had sizzling hunks of roasted venison in the Jarl’s own hall, but Brelyna had decided to refrain from such indulgence while on their unhappy errand. It simply did not feel right to feast and dine as if they were revelers at a festival, and Lydia had grudgingly concurred after giving it some thought. 

In the west, the sun was beginning to go down behind the falls where the Yorgrim merged into the White. The crepuscular glow suffused the western sky. Nightfall was approaching. By Brelyna’s reckoning, she did not have long to wait. _I’m right here. Any moment now. Come on. I don’t bite… _

She frowned as she espied a few figures coming up the road. As they approached she could make out that they were three Dunmer men, one of them a lanky youth perhaps half her age. Her frown deepened. This was not what she was waiting for.

“There, what’d I tell you,” the young one exclaimed triumphantly as they drew within earshot. “Look! One of our own, just like I said! The Dragonborn’s with us on this one, I tell you!”

The youth was dressed as a farm laborer, and so was one of his companions. The third member of their little party wore apparel more appropriate for a city. Judging from their features, Brelyna surmised that they were closely related – cousins, or brothers. But the young Mer who was now looking at her with a strangely proprietary pride bore a certain cast of feature that left no doubt in Brelyna’s mind who he was. This was Luaffyn’s younger brother, Llaro Llothas.

The two older Dunmer nodded respectfully to her. “Greetings, muthsera,” they said. “Dunmer sister.”

She nodded in response. “Dunmer brothers. Brelyna Maryon, College of Winterhold.”

One of them essayed a half-bow at the waist. “I’m Faryl Atheron. I work at the farm down the road, Brandy-Mug Farm. This is my brother, Aval, he sells produce in the city.”

“And I’m your Mer, muthsera, for any other of your more… discreet… needs,” Aval broke in, flashing a smile. “You need anything, come see me.” He winked.

Brelyna blinked. No… that wasn’t a salacious air he had about him. He was up to his ears in _something,_ though. It was none of her business, in any event. Dunmer and Khajiit cultures shared something in common: they made other cultures look uptight.

“Like I told you, she’s the Voice of the Dragonborn,” Llaro told them with a confiding air, as if he’d conferred that title on her himself. “She’ll see to it that things are put right, you see if she doesn’t. She’s come to put that murderous fetcher Grimvar to death for what he’s done!”

“Llaro,” Brelyna said loudly, “come here, will you please.” _You s’wit,_ she added mentally.

Startled, Llaro Llothas did as she bade, looking suddenly apprehensive. The Atherons looked on uncertainly but said nothing.

“Will you repeat to me what you’ve just said to your friends?”

“I… I… well…”

“Repeat it, will you please. Loudly and clearly.”

Lydia was crouching nearby, giving every appearance of being fully occupied with slicing the guts out of the fish she’d caught, but Brelyna knew the housecarl was alert as always and listening carefully to every word.

Llaro swallowed hard. “I… I said, you’ll see to it that things are put right, that you’ve come to… to kill Grimvar…”

“Your exact words.”

“To put that murderous fetcher Grimvar to death.” Llaro’s voice quavered.

She looked him full in the eye. “That is a lie,” she told him, enunciating every word with extreme care. “That is a dangerous lie. You will not repeat that lie to anyone else from this moment forth. Do you understand?” _Stupid s’wit. Do I look like Morag Tong to you?_

Llaro slowly nodded, but looked utterly bewildered.

“I have come here to apprehend the person or persons responsible for the non-accidental death of Llevana, the child of Luaffyn and Grimvar. It may be Grimvar, or it may not. If it is, I will endeavor to deliver him to the Jarl for the Jarl’s justice. If it is not, then I will see to it that he goes free and unmolested. Do you see what your mistake was, Llaro Lothas?”

“Yes, uh, muthsera.” Llaro paused, and plowed on. “But my sister Luaffyn says it was him. She ought to know. She’s his wife and all.”

Brelyna looked to make sure that the Atheron brothers were taking all this in. Then she said, addressing all of them, “The baby was murdered by someone. Luaffyn suspects Grimvar, but she didn’t see it happen. I am gathering evidence that will help me discover who really did the deed. What you must understand, Dunmer brothers, is that I may not make a mistake. I literally _may not._ When I do Speak my verdict, as the Voice of the Dragonborn, I will speak only truth. If the truth is that I do not know the answer for sure, then I have failed in my commission. In which case, so be it.

“But I _cannot _Speak a falsehood. That is the unique nature of the status conferred upon me, the unique nature of the Dragonborn’s Voice. If Grimvar wishes to clear his name, he has only to come forth, and tell me the truth. If he didn’t do it, then I _cannot_ condemn him. But if he did, then the Jarl’s justice will be done, though I will recommend a course of action.

“Do you understand?”

All three of them nodded hastily. The Atherons looked impressed. Llaro looked properly cowed. Brelyna judged that the desired effect had been achieved, and relented.

“Go keep your sister company, Llaro. She needs the love and support of her family right now. Leave off the gossip-mongering. That helps no one.”

“Y-yes, at once, muthsera.”

They bid their farewells to her respectfully and departed, talking to each other in a hushed way and throwing her the occasional look over their shoulders. Llaro took the path that led back to the farmhouse, while the Atherons waved to him and then went down the road.

The full explanation of what it meant to be the Voice of the Dragonborn would have taken too long to deliver there and then – it could span several College lectures in fact, and there would still be a considerable amount of scholarly questions to be asked. Brelyna doubted that she could do justice to the explanation, and the three Dunmer men most likely could not have understood in any case.

The Thu’um – the Voice – was not, as laypeople thought, simply a fancy way to do with one’s bellowing what a mage could do with spells. The true Thu’um did not even have anything to do with vocal chords or lung capacity (which incidentally was why a properly trained Tongue could perform Shouts even with a helmet fully obscuring the face, or a mask covering the mouth). The Voice was an ancient magic far older than any magic taught in any other place, and still not fully understood by the College of Winterhold, House Telvanni, the Imperial Synod, the Aldmeri Dominion’s College of Sapiarchs, or any such institution. The Greybeards had been known to compare the true Thu’um to the concept of the “Breath of Kyne”, or relate them in some way. Whatever else the Greybeards of High Hrothgar knew, they kept to themselves, speaking only in cryptic terms to anyone curious enough to ask.

Neither was the Thu’um intrinsically linked to being Dragonborn. They were two completely distinct things, but thanks to the events of this Era, particularly those of the last few years – the coming of the Last Dragonborn – people everywhere had begun to conflate the two in their minds. One could in fact be a Tongue and use the Thu’um without having anything to do with dragons; conversely, being Dragonborn or Dragon Born was a deep mystery extending back as far as the Dawn Era, before the first Tongues existed.

The Word shaped the World – more, the Word _was_ the World, as the Dragonborn was known to have said, though to comprehend this demanded deep wisdom, deeper than Brelyna herself had achieved thus far. “Dragons cannot lie,” as the Dragonborn taught – yes, Dragons throughout the ages had been cunning, and capable of verbal prevarication by means of such techniques as omission or contextual manipulation, but when Dragons performed _tinvaak_ – Speaking – they could not utter a single syllable of a word that was untrue. They could only Speak of what existed in truth; the strange corollary was that whatever they Shouted therefore _became_ manifest reality.

This, however, did not mean that either the Dragonborn or her designated Voice could simply Speak anything they wanted into existence. Brelyna could not, for example, attempt to Shout into existence a venison chop for Lydia’s hearty consumption, because in any conceivable version of reality it would be a falsehood. She similarly could not Speak to say Grimvar was or was not innocent, as the whim took her, because it simply was not _true_ – it had not yet been established as far as _she_ knew__.__ The Voice was most emphatically _not_ wishful thinking. In that respect it was quite dissimilar to magic as conventionally practiced across all Tamriel; as Master Neloth once quipped, magic was really “wishful thinking with extra steps” – steps that involved such elements as somatic gesticulation, focusing of intent and audible articulation, not to mention depletion of magicka reserves.

Being the Dragonborn’s Voice meant that, when she was at last ready to Speak with that Voice, what she said would be the immanent truth. And all who heard her would have to know and accept it.

She caught Lydia’s eye, and raised an eyebrow. Lydia looked up from the fish, and her gaze flicked to something behind Brelyna. Then she looked back at Brelyna meaningfully, and nodded.

Brelyna cleared her throat. “I hope you understood that as well, Grimvar Cruel-Sea.”

There was a frozen moment, and then Grimvar Cruel-Sea stepped out from behind the bole of the tree that had concealed him. Brelyna stood up, stretching her legs slightly as she did so, and turned around to get a good look at the young man.

He was slighter of figure than she’d expected, below average for a Nord youth, actually – his father was a typically husky Nord man, and their family surely lacked for nothing when it came to nourishment, so it was somewhat strange to see. It was also strange to see such a young face already bearing the clear marks of grief and soul-deep weariness. He was haggard, and not merely from the strain of being on the run.

“Hail and well met, Grimvar,” she said quietly.

He licked his lips. “Brelyna Maryon,” he said, his voice low, “is it true that as the Dragonborn’s Voice, you cannot lie?”

She spread her arms. “When the time comes for me to Speak the truth, as I have explained, at that time I cannot lie. This is not yet that time. But even now, I promise you that I will be honest with you. I hope you will also be honest with me.”

“I need you to promise me something, good lady.”

“I can promise you nothing until I am assured of your innocence. Grimvar, did you do it?”

“No! By Mara’s mercy, no!” His voice shook with emotion. “I swear it. I didn’t harm my daughter. Please… you have to tell Luaffyn, make her believe me, good lady!”

“Just Brelyna will do,” she said automatically. “You will have to make _me_ believe you first. Come with me back to the farmhouse, and I will listen to your testimony.”

But Grimvar was shaking his head. “No,” he said. “I can’t go back there. Not yet.”

A murderer afraid to return to the scene of the foul deed? No. No, that wasn’t it. It didn’t fit.

“What are you afraid of?” Brelyna asked softly.

He remained silent while his jaw worked.

“Do you know who the murderer is?”

He made as if to speak, stopped himself, then continued with visible effort. “I didn’t… see it. But I have a guess.”

“I have guesses, as well.” And one of them was very, very ugly. So ugly that it might in fact be the truth.

“I’ll answer any of your questions. I’ll look my dearest Luaffyn in the eye and tell her the truth, that I didn’t do it. But… but I can’t tell you or her anything else. Please. Promise me. _Don’t make me do it.”_

“If you know who the murderer is…”

“I don’t know for sure! I didn’t see it!” Tears came to his eyes. “Please don’t let it come from me,” he whispered. “Please. I beg you.”

Brelyna’s heart sank. _Ah… so. Indeed._

She knew for sure who it was, now. She knew the answer.

Brelyna asked Lydia to go and fetch Luaffyn from the farmhouse. Then she steered Grimvar to another rock, and urged him to sit down.. “Keep yourself warm while we wait.”

He huddled miserably, hugging himself and looking at his feet, while the fire crackled away. The silence stretched. The sun disappeared over the rim of Yorgrim Overlook.

Then Luaffyn was there, Lydia following behind and jogging to keep up. She came to a stop and stood there, chest heaving. Her face showed no expression.

Grimvar rose to his feet. “Luaffyn.”

Slowly, Luaffyn approached him, saying nothing. Grimvar’s hands closed and opened. His lips parted, then pressed tightly together. In his wounded eyes was a world of hurt.

But he looked straight at her, as he spoke. “It wasn’t me, my love.”

A sob escaped Luaffyn’s lips, but still she said nothing.

“Grimvar,” Brelyna said quietly, “sit down, will you please. I’m going to ask you some questions now.”

He acquiesced with only a whispered “Aye” and slowly sat back down, never taking his soulful eyes off his wife’s. Once again, Brelyna was struck by just how young he was.

Luaffyn sat roughly halfway across the fire from him, and Lydia took up position behind Brelyna. They would now serve as witnesses to what he had to say.

“Grimvar,” she began, “on that day, did you have a harsh exchange of words with your wife Luaffyn before you left the house in a bad temper?”

“Y-yes. Our baby girl, she was crying, and I’d had a long day…”

“What time of day was it?”

“Evening. About one or two hours before sundown.” That much accorded with Luaffyn’s account, so far.

“Where did you go after leaving the farmhouse?”

“I went down the road, towards the city. I wanted to take a room at Candlehearth Hall… no.” He swallowed. “No. I will speak the truth. I wanted to have some drinks, first. Enjoy myself. But I didn’t go there just yet.”

“Where did you go?”

“I stopped by Brandy-Mug Farm. Bolfrida had asked me earlier to stop by when I could, to help fix her handcart.”

“Was she there?”

“Yes. I went with her to look at the handcart, and she showed me what tools she had, but her plane was no good. I told her I’d better go get my own set of tools, especially my plane. She told me not to bother, the hour was getting late, but I told her I’d do it anyway, and she’d need the handcart for the next day, so…”

Brelyna interrupted. “Grimvar. Had you met anyone else along the road, at that point?”

He swallowed before replying. “No.”

“Very well. So, you went back to the farmhouse…”

“Yes, I came back home, and… and Luaffyn wasn’t there.” His voice went hoarse. “I was so afraid I’d driven her away, with my temper. I was… so afraid of that.”

Luaffyn met his gaze stonily and said nothing.

“What did you hear when you came back to the house?”

“It was quiet. Peaceful. I looked into the cradle, and… there she was. Sleeping, peacefully. That was when I knew Luaffyn hadn’t left, after all – she’d never leave Llevana behind. If she were ever to leave me, that is. I didn’t know where she’d gone, but I assumed she would still be somewhere around, so I just quietly got my sack of tools and went out again.”

“Were you still sure that Llevana was still alive at this time?” Brelyna asked very gently.

He nodded. “Yes. She stirred. I wanted to touch her… but I was afraid to wake her. I…” His face crumpled. “I didn’t want to hear her crying again.”

“Go on.”

“I left the house and… and I was going back to Brandy-Mug Farm to help Bolfrida with her handcart, but first I wanted to find Luaffyn. I just… I wanted to talk to her. To… just try to explain myself, that I really did need a night away from the farmhouse, and to apologize for losing my temper. Again.”

Bolfrida’s corroborating testimony could be collected later. Brelyna had little doubt that it would support Grimvar’s story in all the germane details.

“Did you find her?”

“No. I walked down the road, looking around for her, but I didn’t see her. I was starting to get worried. I knew I’d promised Bolfrida, but Llevana was… all alone at home, and I… I just wanted to make sure Luaffyn would go back and watch her. I mean, I knew she would! Luaffyn is… the best mother any child could ask for.” He paused for a moment, breathing raggedly. “I didn’t find her. I went on to Brandy-Mug Farm.”

Brelyna took a deep breath. “This time,” she said, “did you meet anyone while looking for Luaffyn?”

It took a few moments before Grimvar answered. “Yes.” His hollow gaze silently beseeched her to ask no more, to spare him some unspecified agony.

Brelyna nodded to herself. Yes. Yes, he had. _Oh, poor Llevana. Poor child._

Only a few more details to be confirmed. “Can you tell me where your father was, at this time?”

“He was at the port, the East Empire Company office. He had some meetings to conduct, he mentioned. About the next batch of our exports.” Torsten Cruel-Sea, too, could be exonerated easily by dozens, if not hundreds, of eyewitnesses, but that testimony could also wait. It was simply important right now to establish the overall veracity of all that Grimvar said. “Tulvur was with him.” That, too, could be verified.

“Very well. That concludes the main part of my questioning, Grimvar. I pronounce myself convinced of your innocence.”

“Hang on,” Lydia blurted, unable to maintain her customary restraint. “Brelyna, who was it? Who did he meet, coming down the road?”

“Who else?” Brelyna sighed. “The murderer.”

“Well, who is it?” Lydia demanded incredulously.

Luaffyn, eyes blazing, also seemed about to speak, but Brelyna spoke first. “Lydia, the Voice of the Dragonborn charges you now to bear witness. Grimvar Cruel-Sea has not given up the name of the murderer. By neither word nor deed has he implicated the killer. Luaffyn! You, as well! Bear witness!”

Tongue-tied, Lydia and Luaffyn both nodded. Brelyna’s voice had almost boomed, just then.

Grimvar’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “Thank you, kind lady,” he whispered.

The truth could be cruel, cruel as the sea.

When was a mystery no mystery at all?

What was the one encounter Grimvar could have had on the road that could cause him to turn around and carry on with his plans for the evening, instead of returning to the house to look after his daughter? The one person he could have met who would afterwards not have excited Tiber and Ysgramor into a dreadful din of barking?

“Where did you go after repairing the handcart?”

“To Candlehearth Hall. I spent the night there.”

“Tell us what you did when you awoke.”

“I woke up the next morning. I broke my fast. Spent more coin than I should have, but I felt like… like indulging myself a little.” His voice cracked a bit, but he went on. “I came back to the farmhouse at about midmorning. Everything was in an uproar. My… my Llevana was dead. Our Llevana. Luaffyn… she was crying. She’d been crying the whole night, they told me. And when she saw me…”

He looked at her. “My love. Please believe me. I didn’t do it.”

And then Luaffyn began to cry, large tears rolling down her cheeks. “Who is it?” she raged. “Who? Who killed our daughter? Why will you not say who it is?”

Grimvar shook his head, his face contorting with anguish. He reached out, but she turned away from him, shoulders heaving with wracking sobs.

“Luaffyn,” Brelyna said, as gently as she could manage. “You know who it is, by now. You know why he cannot say it.”

“He shields a murderer.”

“He shields nobody. We know the truth now, and soon all will know it as well. We can spare him the pain of saying it. That is why I am here, after all. As the Voice of the Dragonborn. Among other things, I am to speak for those who cannot.”

Slowly, Luaffyn’s sobs subsided, until at last she gave a sharp jerk of her head that sufficed as a nod. But she sat with shoulders hunched, hands clasped in her lap, looking down at the ground. She did not look up at Grimvar, or at anybody.

Brelyna turned to him. “I’m convinced that you’re innocent, but at this time, I think it would still be… unwise… for you to return to your home. Also, I’m afraid that I’ve told your father to seek all means at his disposal to bring you in. This means that he may have asked the Jarl to send out a group of soldiers to look for you – naturally, he’d have ensured that they were sent to follow an entirely false trail,” she added wryly. “I will bring this to a conclusion tomorrow, in the Palace, before the Jarl and his assembled court and all concerned parties. Until then, would you like to spend the night in the Palace’s guest quarters?”

“The guest quarters?”

“Not a euphemism for the jail cells, I assure you. I do mean the guest quarters.”

The remembered words of Llaro Llothas echoed in her mind. “… put that murderous fetcher Grimvar to death…”

“Lydia, would you be so kind as to accompany Grimvar to the Palace, present him to the Jarl and the Steward, and inform them that I deem him innocent of the crime, and also that Luaffyn has retracted her accusation against him…” She glanced at Luaffyn for confirmation. Luaffyn looked up briefly, nodded once, and bowed her head again. She still did not look at Grimvar.

“Luaffyn… would you like to stay with your husband tonight?”

Luaffyn silently shook her head.

“Then perhaps the Steward can assign you your own room. Lydia, could you see to that as well, please?”

“Certainly.”

“The both of you, follow Lydia back to the city now, will you please? Try to get a good night’s sleep. You will be summoned to audience before the Jarl in the morning, and I will see you both then.”

“What about you, Brelyna?” Lydia asked, even as she beckoned both Grimvar and Luaffyn to her.

“Me?” Brelyna sighed. She had, of course, reserved the unhappiest task for herself. “I’m… off to bring in a murderer.”

_When is a mystery no mystery at all?_

_When it is a secret, painful beyond measure, the keeping of which will first break your heart, then your spirit._


	7. Chapter 7

Out of courtesy, Brelyna rapped on the farmhouse door three times and waited a decent interval before entering.

It was as quiet as a grave inside. The only light came from the hearth. In the air hung the light fragrance of a rabbit stew slowly coming to boil in the kettle. A lone figure sat at the fireplace, in the seat Brelyna had previously occupied, and looked up at her approach.

There was no surprise on Hillevi Cruel-Sea’s face, only the same closed hostility she had exhibited earlier.

“Good evening,” Brelyna said, coldly polite.

The side of Hillevi’s mouth twisted. “Not much good about it, with you here.”

“Hillevi Cruel-Sea, I request and require that you come with me, and present yourself to Steward Lonely-Gale and Jarl Brunwulf Free-Winter. There will be an audience with the Jarl tomorrow morning, an audience that you are also requested and required to attend.”

“How very polite of you, Elf,” Hillevi said with a sneer. “The courtesies of ancient Morrowind, no doubt. So much more _civilized_ than us, are you? ‘Request and require’, indeed.” She turned her attention back to stirring the pot. “I don’t have to take orders from the likes of you, witch-elf.”

“You are under suspicion of the murder of your granddaughter Llevana…”

“You stand here, under my roof, in my house, and accuse me…!”

“… daughter of Grimvar Cruel-Sea and his wife Luaffyn Llothas, by administering a fatal dose of nightshade extract…”

“Get out, you sly Dunmer witch! Get out and go back to Morrowind! Your kind doesn’t belong here!”

“… through the mouth while she slept, bringing about her untimely and wrongful death. Come with me to the Palace of the Kings.” Brelyna took a step forward. “Or I will take you there, willing or not.”

Hillevi was on her feet, wooden ladle gripped tightly in hand. Her face was contorted with rage.

“You dare. You dare!” she snarled, almost incoherent. “In my house… my homeland…”

Brelyna cocked her ears and tilted her head. Someone was approaching. Odd – Tiber and Ysgramor had not begun their furious barking at the approach of strangers. Quickly, she stepped away from the door and pressed herself against the wall.

The door burst open.

“Hillevi! They found him! They took your boy! We’re going now to get…”

The speaker stopped short as he spotted Brelyna, whom he’d drawn almost level with as he was rushing into the house. He went googly-eyed, and staggered back a step. It was the sellsword Stenvar. Two others, both Nord men, halted at the threshold and gawked for a moment.

“It’s her! The Dunmer bitch! Get her!” Stenvar yelled. His face blazed with undisguised hatred.

“No! Stop!” Hillevi screamed, backing away. “Stenvar!”

Brelyna barely had time to duck the swing of the warhammer that was aimed at her head. It smashed into the wall, sending splinters flying everywhere. Immediately Stenvar yanked it out, creating another small explosion of wood chips, and raised it high.

“For the true Sons of Skyrim!” he yelled, and brought it down swiftly upon Brelyna.

She crossed her arms and channeled magicka into them, giving her flesh the consistency of stone. Still, the smashing impact of the warhammer was enough to make her knees buckle. She staggered back a few steps, reeling from the impact and almost falling over. To her left was the wall. The other two Nord men moved past Stenvar to come at her from the other side. Sharp daggers gleamed in their meaty fists.

Stenvar raised his hammer for another overhead swing. Brelyna flung her hand at him, with fingers outspread. A fan of flames emerged from her fingertips and struck Stenvar in the face, singing his eyebrows. He screamed and flinched reflexively, but clearly his reputation had been well-earned; with true battle-hardened instincts he maintained his footing and followed through with his attack. Brelyna barely managed to deflect it with her left arm, but the glancing impact was enough to send her to her knees. She winced. Despite the magic hardening her skin, she felt pain shooting through her arm and shoulder.

“Grab her arms… I’ll take this one...”

The two accomplices with Stenvar each took hold of one of her arms roughly, and one of them swung a fist into her belly. His fist felt as hard as a stone. Brelyna gagged, and sagged in their grasp.

“That’ll stop her elf magic,” the brutish fist-fighter grunted.

_Really? You think that will do it? Divines’ sakes. You “True Nords” really do hate learning about anything, don’t you?_

She pretended to cough and choke some more, and made herself go limp. This was unforeseen. These three, here, and familiar guests of the household…

“Be better to stop it altogether,” the other one said, holding up his dagger to her throat. She quickly channeled magicka to her neck and upper torso, making her skin harden. _Murderous sort, are you?_

“Are you mad, Angrenor?” Hillevi hissed, from her corner. “Stop this madness at once! Rolff! Stenvar! Stop this! You’re in my house, you fools!”

Stenvar was furiously blinking, clutching at his singed face. “We’ll take care of this mess, Hillevi. First, we make sure this one disappears. We know how to do it right. And then, we go grab your boy Grimvar and get him to safety. Angrenor, finish her.”

_You know how to “do it right.” Just how deep does this hole go?_

“You’ll get blood all over my floor! Stop this, I say!”

Stenvar made a wordless sound of frustration. “Fine! You two bind and gag her. We’ll drag the gray-skin bitch out back and hack her up. Feed her to the wolves. Or send her back to the traitor Dragonborn in pieces,” he sniggered. “Hillevi. Rope. Get some rags, make a gag. Don’t want her squealing too loudly. You two hold her tight!”

_All right. I’ve heard enough._

Rolff and Angrenor tightened their grips on Brelyna’s captive arms.

Then they flew backwards, as the brilliant flash of lightning filled the room for an incandescent instant. The air filled with the smell of a storm. The thunderbolts from Brelyna’s palms slammed Rolff and Angrenor into opposite walls across the room, leaving darkened, smoking patches on their chests as they both collapsed into heaps on the floor.

Sparks crackled around Brelyna’s forearms as she slowly straightened up, wincing at the pain in her abdomen. But it was already fading – the impact had only winded her for a few moments. All those hours spent developing her abdominal resilience in the training yard of Heljarchen Hall had paid off, it seemed.

_Stupid s’wits the lot of them. Stormcloak renegades, perhaps? You really didn’t make friends of everyone in Eastmarch, did you, Dragonborn…_

Stenvar lifted his hammer, but suddenly froze, completely and utterly. He stood, as still as a statue. No part of his body moved.

Brelyna Maryon stood with one hand outstretched towards Stenvar. Coils of green ghostlight writhed like snakes around her arm. Magicka sheathed her entire body with a faint shimmer. A golden glow appeared briefly around her left arm, and faded, as did the pain.

These boorish ruffians thought they could drag her out somewhere and just murder her. Or stifle her spellcasting with a punch to the gut.

_Really. Who do these louts think I am? _

With a flick of her wrist, she telekinetically caused the paralyzed Stenvar to topple over. His cheek struck the corner of a table and he bounced off, clattering around on the floor like an awkward statue. A bruise formed and began to spread on his face. Still, he remained completely motionless – and he would stay that way for as long as Brelyna wished it.

His two accomplices staggered to their feet slowly, groaning. Then they screamed, because their thighs had suddenly sprouted spears of ice, piercing their flesh all the way through. They fell down, their daggers clattering uselessly onto the floor, clutching at their crippled legs and howling with agony.

_Yeah, how do you like that? College-trained mage here, n’wahs. Telvanni-trained too, have to concede that much. Well, thanks, Master Neloth. I got something out of all those years, at least._

She felt very cold inside. Very tired.

She suddenly wanted, very much, to go _home. _

But home wasn’t a place that existed for her. Home was nowhere. She’d left Blacklight behind her; she’d left Tel Mithryn behind as well. For years she’d tried to think of Skyrim as a home, or at least her little corner of it in Winterhold. But it seemed constrictive, after a while, and so she had gone gallivanting all over Skyrim with the Dragonborn, and underneath it, and to other planes beyond Mundus. She’d seen far more than most people ever saw within the span of their lives. She did want to go all over Tamriel, before all was said and done. Visit High Rock, Hammerfell, Valenwood. The Summerset Isles, although hopefully not as part of an invasion force. The green hills of Auridon. She did want to see it all.

But the one thing she hadn’t seen in all these years, and in all her travels, was a home she could call her own. And no matter where she went… she saw the ugly truth that the Dragonborn’s eyes always saw.

She looked around the room at her assailants, and at Hillevi Cruel-Sea cowering in a corner, ashen-faced.

_You know what it’s all about. You know the truth of life is suffering, and that evil endures as long as people do. You know all this… and yet, you still stand atop that mountain of yours, endlessly trying to Shout love into people’s hearts, even though they never seem to want it there, they never seem to_ listen_properly…_

Brelyna turned and fixed her glowing crimson eyes upon Hillevi, who shrank from her gaze like a whipped cur. The sight gave Brelyna no pleasure. She was not one to delight in the misery of others, no, not even a woman who had murdered her own granddaughter in the cot…

“Do not vex me overmuch, Hillevi Cruel-Sea.” Her voice reverberated with arcane force. “Come willingly, or come bound – but you will come. You and your cohorts.”

Trembling, Hillevi nodded.

**

Lydia was sauntering up the road, the huge Axe of Whiterun carried negligently across her broad shoulders. The housecarl gave her a cheery wave, looking curiously at the three floating bodies and one walking woman behind Brelyna. She evinced not much surprise, otherwise.

“I see you’ve taken care of the lot,” she said, when she was within earshot.

“You knew they were coming?”

“One of the Dunmer from earlier, the shifty-looking one, Aval was his name, I think? He came running up to us when we’d almost reached the stables. Wanted to warn us that he’d seen a trio of armed and angry men marching up the road towards Hollyfrost Farm. Thought they might want to give you trouble.”

“Well, he wasn’t entirely wrong.”

“Mm? Entirely?”

“They didn’t know I was there. They were going to confer with Hillevi – apparently, they were under the impression that we’d smoked Grimvar out of hiding and were escorting him to be imprisoned. I surmise these self-styled ‘Sons of Skyrim’ were going to make plans with Hillevi to break him out. Speaking of which, where are Grimvar and Luaffyn?”

“Well, I wanted to just leave them and come after you straightaway, to make sure you were all right. Then I thought…” Lydia scratched the side of her nose with her free hand. “I thought it might be some sort of ploy, and that maybe they had some people waiting to spring on Grimvar and do a bit of premature punishment, as it were. So I walked them all the way across the bridge to the gates, and told off some of the city guards to take them the rest of the way to the Palace. Luaffyn would have to do the talking with the Steward, but I thought she seemed up to it. They ought to be comfortably resting in their rooms by now.”

“Well… that was good thinking, even though Aval was telling you the truth. There could still have been an ambush waiting for Grimvar.” Yes, those two prospects were not mutually exclusive. She nodded at Lydia. “You did the right thing.”

“Yeah, I thought it was what you’d want. In any case...” Lydia glanced over Brelyna’s shoulder and looked back, face blank. “I didn’t think the Avatar of Julianos would be in much danger from a bunch of thugs.”

Brelyna compressed her lips. “Hrrrrmmm,” she commented acerbically.

Lydia blinked at her, wide-eyed.

“Well… come with me, then. You can help me escort Hillevi Cruel-Sea.”

Lydia’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the sullen woman following Brelyna and her captured prisoners. “Right you are.”


	8. Chapter 8

It was almost midnight, but the Main Hall was all abuzz with conversation. It seemed as though all the civic groups had found a way to send some representatives to attend the trial. Ordinarily, Brelyna reflected, it would have been more than a little strange for this case to become so high-profile; neither the Steward nor the Jarl, men of probity and good sense, would have made the domestic trouble of one family – no matter how prominent – such a public affair, putting their private grief on display for the indelicate attentions of all and sundry.

But this was no longer simply a case of infant death by mishap on a farm; this had gone beyond even a case of infant murder. Brelyna Maryon, the Voice of the Dragonborn, had been attacked by members of the Sons of Skyrim. In the space of a few hours, the news had raised a furore in the city. The ramifications had grown – and correspondingly, so had Brelyna’s burden of responsibility.

She probably hadn’t encouraged a discreet approach, she thought, by simply walking up to the gates with her little party in tow, which included three floating and paralyzed bodies. Technically, she hadn’t violated the Levitation Act of 3E 421 – she’d used Alteration to reduce the weight of the three Nord thugs to almost nothing, and then placed them atop invisible and movable platforms of air. Then she simply wafted them gently along. That wasn’t _levitation_ as such, that was… magical wheelbarrows. Not that anyone in the city was likely to make an issue of it, though.

Subsequently, she’d had to overawe the gate guards a little, informing them in no uncertain terms that first, she had identified and brought a child-killer to be taken into their custody. Furthermore – on their watch, so to speak – the Voice of the Dragonborn had been unpleasantly accosted and severely inconvenienced by the so-called Sons of Skyrim, and was this how Skyrim’s oldest city treated the representative of the Dovahkiin, the wearer of the Storm Crown, Harbinger of the Companions, the Dragon of the North, and so on, and to what extent did the actions of these miscreants represent the true attitudes of Windhelm’s citizens, and so forth.

By the time she was done with her harangue, a full brigade of city guards had been turned out of the barracks to provide an escort for her and her retinue directly to the Palace. A small detail was told off to take Hillevi to a holding cell. Lydia hadn’t even needed to say a word throughout the whole thing; she’d just stood to one side and smirked.

She looked around the Hall again. People stood in clusters, some of which were easily distinguished by race. The Nords were by far the most numerous, as might be expected, but they were standing in two distinct groups, and each looked uncomfortable with the other’s presence. Brelyna’s lips quirked in amusement. Naturally, the group looking at her with surly frowns and barely-veiled dislike had to be the Sons of Skyrim, or those sympathetic to their beliefs – almost all grizzled males, with only a few women in their ranks, and those of somewhat more mature years. Except… yes, there was the blacksmith, Hermir Strong-Heart, this time wearing somewhat more than her blacksmith apron. The other group tended a little more towards youth, and seemed about evenly split as far as gender went. Brelyna didn’t know who they were, but she could see that they were looking at her with trepidation. They weren’t exactly happy at her presence, either… or what her presence signified.

In a small group of their own stood Torsten Cruel-Sea, his son Grimvar… and an unfamiliar Dark Elf woman. Brelyna mentally sorted through her inner library and threw up a reference: this had to be Idesa Sadri, Grimvar’s old nurse. Idesa had an arm around Grimvar’s shoulders; Grimvar looked sad and lost. Torsten stood with arms folded across his barrel chest, also with downcast eyes. As a group, they looked forlorn in the extreme.

And in another tiny group, directly across the main Hall, stood the Llothas family: the matriarch Radene, Luaffyn’s callow brother Llaro, and Luaffyn herself. Luaffyn stood with head bowed and hands folded in front of her. Radene Llothas held herself with rigid pinch-cheeked dignity. Llaro looked as though he wished a hole in the stone floor would appear to swallow him up into its comforting anonymous depths.

So, husband and wife were not standing together. Not a good sign. Grimvar was casting longing looks across the intervening space, but Luaffyn was not looking up at all to meet his eyes.

Brelyna’s people were there, in force. The Dark Elves in Windhelm had organized into an Association, and Brelyna could only assume that these were important members present, even though there did seem to be rather a lot of them. There were familiar faces, all of whom lit up with smiles of acknowledgement as her gaze swept over them. A slight oddity presented itself in the form of a lone Altmer face among the group – Niranye, was that her name? Someone involved in local commerce, at any rate. Brelyna recognized Aval Atheron; he caught her eye and grinned, giving her a little wave and a conspiratorial wink. She rolled her eyes slightly and looked away. _Not helping, you s’wit._ If the Nord contingents chose to think that she was first and foremost a Dunmer, instead of the Dragonborn’s Voice, and would primarily advance her people’s interests…

And a nice surprise: the Argonian Assemblage were represented as well, by three of their number. Brelyna remembered Scouts-Many-Marshes, an old acquaintance; evidently he remembered her as well, for he favored her with a friendly nod, in addition to erecting the spine of greeting. Argonians and Dunmer never got along very well as a rule – there was too much history there – but in Skyrim, at least, a lot of the past was typically set aside. Vulnerable communities in Skyrim had to band together to face real and present challenges. Brelyna Maryon had no reason to hold against the Windhelm Argonians the scourging of Mournhold after the Red Year by the invading army out of Black Marsh; they in turn had no inclination to take her to task for the fact that her people used to enslave theirs in Morrowind. It was good to see him and his fellow Argonians again, and inside the Main Hall of the Palace, when back in Ulfric’s day they hadn’t even been allowed within the walls of the city… but why were they here? What interest could this case have for their community?

A less pleasant surprise: the Imperial delegation was present as well, dour dignitaries accompanied by even more grim-faced soldiers. These represented the Imperial military presence in Windhelm and all Eastmarch. As such, they were technically only a garrison… but from what Brelyna understood they exerted themselves to weigh in on almost any matter of import, to try and persuade Jarl Brunwulf to accept the guidelines laid down by Imperial legislation in lieu of reliance on his own judgment. Brelyna had not exchanged so much as two words with any of them over the course of her investigation, in effect completely ignoring their claims to jurisdiction – this had to rankle. Indeed, they were casting her a few looks laden with asperity. She counted two Altmer faces among the group – not Thalmor, of course, since no Thalmor could come within ten miles of Windhelm without being slain outright. But they did not look comfortable at all in this particular crowd.

This entire fraught scene filled her with a sense of foreboding. This was… bad. She hadn’t known it was quite this bad. The lines of division in Windhelm’s civil society were laid bare, for any observer with the clarity afforded by outsider status. In a flash of insight, she realized the import of this case, and the reason she had been sent here by the Dragonborn.

This was to be a test case – a landmark case, even, for public demonstration and the establishment of precedence. The Dragonborn clearly wished her Voice to reach where it hadn’t reached before. The Jarl could give judgment, once the conclusions were laid before him, but he would be under pressure from the representatives of Imperial authority to follow established Imperial guidelines that might not work out so well in Skyrim’s context. Here, too, were nativist Nords represented in considerable numbers; if they were not appeased by the outcome, there was a slim chance they could regress from nativist to secessionist all over again. Or perhaps this case wouldn’t be the sole trigger, but it would be one more falling rock that would eventually help to set off the avalanche…

As for the other communities, they wanted to see if Brunwulf’s “New Society” amounted to anything real, when it came down to the day-to-day affairs of the city. The Dunmer and Argonians weren’t looking for Brunwulf’s law to fail; they were watching tensely, in the hope that his law could bear the strain of this muddled case. They all knew him for a just man – now they wanted to see if he was, after all, just a man.

Upon such fragile foundations was the edifice of society built…

_Poor Llevana. You didn’t ask for any of this. You didn’t know your murder would be a squall that broke into a storm. It’s not your fault at all, poor innocent soul, that now we all might well founder and sink…_

Unless, of course, Brelyna Maryon could steer them safely out of these treacherous shoals. It fell to her, of all people, to do this. If she didn’t know any better, she’d have thought that the Dragonborn was playing a mean prank on her.

She took a deep breath. First, the truth had to be revealed, and established beyond doubt.

“Bring the accused.”

They brought in a shackled but defiant Hillevi Cruel-Sea, wrinkled brow furrowed with displeasure, hollowed eyes filled with scorn as she looked up at the throne and at Brelyna standing with one foot atop the dais. There was a stir in the chamber. The group that Brelyna had mentally classified as the “hostile Nords” looked displeased. Several of them started calling out.

“Unchain her, you beasts!”

“Free her! Free Hillevi!”

“Skyrim will be free!”

_Bit of a head-scratcher, that last one,_ Brelyna thought. In what sense, exactly, did Hillevi function as a stand-in for all Skyrim?

“Order! We will have order!” the Steward shouted over the growing din. “The Jarl holds court in the Palace of the Kings. Order, I say, or I’ll throw you all out, and be damned to the lot of you!” Lonely-Gale glared. They glared right back, and shook their fists at him. Actually shook their fists at him.

Brelyna resisted the urge to roll her eyes. For people who lived in such a cold land, the Nords were ridiculously hot-headed. Maybe that was how they kept warm. She’d never asked Lydia. Perhaps she ought to.

As a matter of procedure, Hillevi would have to be unshackled anyway, but when the shackles clicked free, there was a hearty cheer from the “hostile Nord” contingent, as if they’d won some victory. Hillevi turned to face them, and actually smiled, albeit grimly.

Again, Brelyna could barely keep from rolling her eyes. Nords tended to treat a lot of things as glorious spectacle. Almost everything had to be a battle; they thought mostly in terms of crushing the opposition, of triumphing over an enemy in one way or another, even when the situation was far more nuanced than such combative paradigms. Only rarely could the bellicose Nords be made to understand when a situation was so lamentable that there could be no winners, no grand victory.

_Well, time to get cracking._

She waited for the Steward to succeed in quieting the crowd a bit, before she spoke. “Hillevi Cruel-Sea,” she began, “you are accused of the crime of murdering a member of your household; to wit, the murder of your granddaughter, the infant Llevana, by means of poison…”

“Who is it who accuses me?” Hillevi interrupted her fiercely. “Who is my accuser?”

“I am.”

“You.” Hillevi sneered. “A no-account filthy gray-skin whore. You’re not fit to stand in this place, let alone up there beside the throne of our kings!”

There was an uproar, predictably. Again, Brelyna waited patiently for the Steward and the Jarl’s guards to restore order. While she waited, she caught Brunwulf’s eye. The Jarl was looking at her with the faintest shadow of doubt in his expression; faint, but it was there. She returned his look with what she hoped was a reassuring nod and smile, then turned away and maintained a serene silence until the noise had once again subsided sufficiently.

_Damn it, Dragonborn, how do you do it? It’s not the same when I try to do the nod-and-smile thing._

“You have recognized me before, Hillevi, as the Voice of the Dragonborn,” she said, when she was sure her voice would carry. “The time to deny me is past. In addition to the charge of murder, I charge you also with conspiracy to commit a crime against my person. You and the three men currently in jail – to wit, the sellsword Stenvar, the drunkard and rabble-rouser Rolff Stone-Fist, and the mendicant Angrenor Once-Honored – attacked me in your home, with a clear intention to slay me and dispose quietly of my body, or send pieces of me back to the Dragonborn…”

“I have nothing to do with those men’s actions. Also, you were an intruder. They may have been overzealous in defending me from you, but they’re fine people.” Hillevi’s chin rose defiantly. “Fine people,” she repeated.

_I was arresting you, you foul hag._ “You must now answer to the charges laid against you. How do you plead?”

“What proof do you have against me?” Hillevi scoffed. “Who are your witnesses? You told me some nonsense about nightshade poisoning. It’s you Dunmer witches who resort to poison all the time. A coward’s weapon. If you’re so adamant that it was a murder, then I may as well accuse that woman of the deed!” She flung a hand out towards Radene, stabbing her finger at her counterpart. “There! I accuse her! What now, my lady _Voice? _Will she and I have a trial of arms to settle this?” She laughed bitterly. “She’s wanted to murder me from the first time we laid eyes upon each other. Come on, then, I say! An honest trial of arms, the old way! You and me, Radene! Let us see who’s the stronger!”

“There will be no trial of arms!” Brelyna shouted. A sudden resonance charged her voice. It was not the Thu’um… but it was something.

In the sudden silence that followed, Brelyna said, “You do not think yourself a coward, Hillevi?”

“I don’t have to listen to this from you…”

“Are you a proud Nord, Hillevi?”

“None prouder.”

“You love your family? You love your son, Grimvar?”

“Of course I do. What business do you have asking these fool questions, Elf?”

“The Dragonborn has a gift for you. Hold out your hand, will you please.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Enough of this farce, you Dunmer harlot…”

_“Hold out your hand.”_

Slowly, grudgingly, Hillevi complied.

Brelyna stepped off the dais and walked slowly towards Hillevi Cruel-Sea. Her hand went to her belt pouch.

Yes, all the evidence against Hillevi Cruel-Sea was only circumstantial. Yes, the case was far from solid. Yes, she only had the testimonials of Luaffyn and Grimvar, in addition to her own inferences, to serve as evidence. Corroborating evidence from expert witnesses like Helgird and Quintus Navale could help, as well as depositions from Tulvur and others about such facts as the behavior of the dogs Tiber and Ysgramor, but none of that could prove the case beyond a shadow of a doubt. It wasn’t as if Hillevi Cruel-Sea had kept a written journal, after all, incriminating herself fully.

But Hillevi would indeed have to do it herself. And the Dragonborn had known this. Oh yes, she’d known this.

Brelyna came to a stop in front of the waiting Hillevi. She dipped into her pouch, took out the silver locket, and placed it carefully into Hillevi’s suddenly trembling palm, letting the fine silver chain pool into Hillevi’s hand.

“The Dragonborn sends her regards,” she said quietly, and took a step back.

It was like watching a mountain crumble. The expressions warring for prominence on Hillevi’s face were almost frightening to see. Her entire body seemed to crumple, to fold in on itself, as her knees suddenly buckled. Her hand closed over the silver locket and gripped it so tightly that the veins on her bony forearms bulged.

“You dare,” she whispered. “You dare. How dare you…”

Brelyna said nothing. She watched, fascinated despite herself. Slowly, Hillevi sank to her knees, and that stiff neck of hers finally bent completely, yet she kept holding up the fist clutching the locket, as if it was locked in place in the air in an invisible vise. The end result was that she appeared to be kneeling and offering something in her closed grasp to Brelyna.

There had been no magic at all in Fjotli’s silver locket; Brelyna had checked it herself, out of idle curiosity. It was just a simple bit of jewelry, albeit with fairly good filigree. Nonetheless, Brelyna realized there was a powerful magic of a sort at work here. Not the sort one could study in any school.

“Hillevi, did you murder Llevana?”

In the horrified silence, Hillevi’s whispered answer could be heard clearly. “Yes.”

“Why? Why kill a baby?”

Hillevi looked up. Brelyna took a step back by sheer reflex. She had not known mortal eyes could convey so much… _hatred._

“You dare give this to me,” Hillevi rasped. “You and your traitorous mistress. How did you come by this? This belonged to my daughter. My dead daughter, Fjotli. Killed by Elves. Killed by Elven scum.”

“I am given to understand,” Brelyna said, trying to keep her voice steady, “that your daughter Fjotli was killed some years ago by a renegade band of Altmer brigands, calling themselves the Summerset Shadows.”

“All Elven scum. All the same to me,” Hillevi spat. “You come to our lands, you come where you’re not wanted, you eat our food and sully our water, you fill the air with your strange smells and noisy songs. Always demanding more, you greedy wretches. Not enough for you that we give you a roof over your heads, food and board, fair wages, oh no. You always want more, more, __more. __Always wanting more than your fair share, without having had to work for it. To _bleed_ for it."

She was raving by now, and Brelyna could not have stopped her even if she’d wanted to.

“Our ancestors built this city. We tamed this wild land. We cleared away the wicked Snow Elves so that our children, _our children,_ could grow strong and prosper. Ysgramor, the Harbinger of Us All, he showed the way, oh yes. And then you foreigners come up from the south… out of your own rotten diseased lands, you come to claim ours.”

Hillevi turned. Her wild eyes took in the Dunmer, the Argonians, the flabbergasted Imperials.

“Foreign scum. So many of our sons and daughters died fighting to keep us free from you. From your vile clutches. And yet here you are. But they fought so hard, so bravely, even those who weren’t soldiers. They were true warriors, to stand up to you. So strong, so beautiful… my Fjotli… we were so proud of her… you were always looking up to her, weren’t you, Grimvar, my boy? You always wanted to be like her, you said, you wanted to be a fine, strong warrior…”

Grimvar flinched and shrank from her gaze.

“She was going to enlist, fight for Skyrim, but she was murdered. And then Friga, poor Friga Shatter-Shield, she would’ve been Fjotli’s shield sister. Yes, she would have. Torbjorn? Are you here? Are you here, Torbjorn Shatter-Shield?”

Her gaze searched the crowd, but she did not find who she was looking for.

“We grieve with you, Torbjorn! The true children of Skyrim grieve with you! Friga Shatter-Shield, murdered and mutilated on the streets of our own city… by some foppish Imperial scum…

“Imperials. Elves. Lizards. Disgusting, the lot of you. Vermin! Instead of going back to clean up your own befouled homelands, you come here and try to take ours, the land that we paid for with our blood, sweat and tears. You lazy boots, I cringe when I have to see your scaly skin. Unnatural creatures. You might move and talk like us, but how dare you insist you’re our equals? And you gray-skins. You came here to our land as refugees. We welcomed you. We gave you a whole island so you’d have somewhere to call your own. We gave you a piece of our own city, the very first city of Men in all Skyrim, all Tamriel! This very city!

“And all you do is complain. And lie, and cheat, and steal, and deal in drugs, in your dirty little ‘Cornerclub.’ You bring to Windhelm the very worst things from Morrowind. You bring drugs. You bring crime. You even bring _professional murderers,_ you even have those, and you bring them into Skyrim. Vile scum.

“How is this fair? How can the Dragonborn prattle on about her ‘justice’ when our finest, most beautiful Nord women die before their time, murdered by foreign scum? When so many of our bravest and finest sons died defending Skyrim’s honor? All for nothing! All so that these vermin can come into our lands, take over our cities, take it all for their own! Is this her _justice? _

“And then my son chose to marry one of them. Our fault, I suppose.” She laughed bitterly. “Torsten always wanted to think of himself as a large-hearted sort of man. He took Idesa into our household, gave her work, put our children into her care. I don’t mind Idesa Sadri. She’s a fine person. So few of you are, but she is. You’re a fine person, Idesa Sadri. You took good care of my children. And you never complained. Good, that. I like an Elf who doesn’t complain. Who works hard. And knows her place. A very fine Dunmer woman.”

Idesa Sadri covered her eyes and turned away.

“But then Grimvar chose… a tavern wench. A songstress. A gray-skin slattern. And my fool husband allowed it. Endorsed it. Declared publicly he was proud of it.

“I swallowed it. Wouldn’t have been seemly to object. Not when everyone seemed so happy about making it such a big affair. I held my peace. Torsten, I’ll have you remember, I held my peace! I did as you asked. I held my peace.

“Then the… _child…_ was born… and at first…

“At first I was so happy. The gods had answered my prayers, my secret prayers. Talos the Unerring, Talos the Unassailable, he must have prevailed upon his sister goddesses. The child that was given us through that union was a Nord. Not an Elf. Not a Dunmer. But a _Nord._ Like Grimvar. The seed was strong… yes… the seed was strong. And so was the spirit of this land. I thought.

“But then… we saw the eyes. The eyes, they grew, and we saw them.”

Hillevi’s voice had gone very low, but the Hall was so deathly silent, it seemed as though everyone was holding their breaths.

“They were not the eyes of a Nord. A foul, unnatural thing had happened. This baby. This… creature. It had the eyes and soul of a Dunmer.

“What kind of gruesome joke was this? What kind of foul Daedric sorcery was this? How could such a thing have been possible? You Daedra-worshipping gray-skins. You must’ve done it. Somehow, you corrupted the baby’s soul. She wore the skin and body of a true Nord. One of us. But inside, the truth was something different. She was a living lie. A living, breathing mockery.

“Why should a monster like that live? Why, when we’ve lost so much, we’ve lost so many of our own daughters? And now this? _How could I suffer such a monster to live? _

_“If my Fjotli had to die, why should this one live?_

“What I did, I did for us. I did for the children of Skyrim, the heirs of Ysgramor, our friends and loved ones in Sovngarde. I did it for us all. Enough of us have fallen. Enough, I say. It’s time we take back what’s ours. Our home. Our birthright. This soil for which we’ve shed our blood. It’s ours, and we’re taking it back.”

And then Hillevi uttered the most truly horrifying words Brelyna Maryon had ever heard, or would ever hear. Fourteen words. Fourteen of the most abhorrent words that had ever been spoken anywhere.

“We must secure the existence of our people, and a future for Nord children.”

Somewhere in the back of the hall, someone retched.

Brelyna blinked. She’d just had to fight down a surge of queasiness. And she realized she was far from the only one; here and there in the assembled throng, people were looking decidedly green about the gills. A few were swaying on their feet. Some were wide-eyed with horror; others shook their heads slowly in silent consternation. Others were staring at the kneeling woman with expressions of utter revulsion. The blacksmith Hermir, Brelyna noted distantly, was one of those.

The “hostile Nords” – the Sons of Skyrim – were silent and grim. But other than Hermir, not a single one looked directly at Hillevi. They looked away – at their feet, at the walls, not meeting anyone’s gaze.

_Spoke your own secret thoughts, did she? Said aloud what the rest of you have been thinking all this time, but were too ashamed to say? And rightly so. Ah me… Dragonborn, your people, oh your poor people. There’s a rift here in Skyrim, all right, and can’t neither magic nor the passin’ of time make it right._

No. No, there had to be a way, or the Dragonborn wouldn’t have sent her here.

Brelyna Maryon turned to the Jarl. Brunwulf was leaning forward on the throne, hands planted firmly on his knees. He seemed to be taking in the entire scene with grave attention. Only Brelyna and the Steward were close enough to mark the way his fingers trembled. Knowing what she knew of his character, it was likely to be a sign of suppressed rage. The man had been a veteran soldier, after all.

“Jarl Brunwulf Free-Winter, are you satisfied as to the truth of the matter? Do you accept my conclusion that Hillevi Cruel-Sea is the murderer of Llevana, her granddaughter?”

He nodded slowly. “Yes. I am satisfied.”

“I further conclude that she was alone in the crime, without co-conspirators.”

“As you say.”

“The matter of the assault on my person can be attended to later. There is no urgency.”

“Certainly, if you wish, Brelyna.”

“Hillevi Cruel-Sea should be taken back to her cell for the night. I ask that we reconvene at noon tomorrow. I will deliver my Speaking then.”

“It shall be as you say… serjo.”

Strictly speaking, that wasn’t a proper honorific for her, but Brelyna let it slide. She appreciated the intention, anyway.

The truth had been revealed. The mystery had been solved.

But the problem of justice, unfortunately, remained.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains lines adapted from various poems by Muriel Rukeyser.

Brelyna sat on a rock beside the river, and thought.

Dawn was breaking, the sun casting ripples of golden-hued light that slowly suffused the deep blue inkiness of the fleeing night sky. As the light of truth and knowledge was meant to chase away the shadows of ignorance, Brelyna thought. Sad, that it so rarely did.

She took off her gloves and looked down at the back of her hands. Saint Veloth had led her ancestors out of the old land of Summerset and into Resdayn, so the teachings went; thus they became the Chimer, the “Changed Elves”. Then Vivec and his two compatriots had seized godhood for themselves, taking power from the Heart of Lorkhan, and the Daedric Prince Azura had proceeded to turn all the Chimer into the Dunmer, the “Dark Elves”. The orthodox teaching was that Azura, whose skin was twilight and whose eyes were the setting sun, had chosen to make the Dunmer resemble her so that when they laid eyes upon each other they would never forget they were evermore living under her curse, the doom of the Nerevarine.

Well, the Nerevarine had come and gone. Yet the curse, if it could be called that, remained.

The true curse, Brelyna thought, was not racial difference; it was racial animus, and anything that stoked the dreadful fire thereof.

Her Speaking would have to deliver justice. But to whom? And how? By Imperial law, or almost any Jarl’s judgment, Hillevi would have to be put to death; but what purpose would that serve? For whose wounds would Hillevi’s death be a salve? And for which disaffected parties would Hillevi become a valiant woman fallen for the cause, executed by a spineless Imperial puppet on the word and testimony of two Dunmer women? Yet, if Hillevi were not put to death, what then was to be her punishment for so heinous an act as she’d committed, so heinous that the word “crime” did not suffice?

What Speaking could she deliver now, as the Voice of the Dragonborn, that would be properly heard and understood, that would resound into the future – a better future?

She’d spoken to Luaffyn and Grimvar late into the night, first separately, then together, after Luaffyn had consented to be in the same room as her husband. The relationship between Grimvar and his mother had been wounded unto death, Brelyna could see that plainly… but she was relieved that Luaffyn chose not to hold his mother’s actions against him, or his unwillingness to directly name his mother as a suspect. And Grimvar was to be commended – he hadn’t said any typically foolish Nord male thing, such as “We could always have another” or “At least she’s at peace now”, or bluster about how he’d been wrongly accused. He had simply sat with her and shared her grief – opened himself to it, really. He’d silently and patiently offered her his love, until at last she accepted it once more.

Their love had held, after all, on its own. That was a tremendous consolation.

Torsten had stayed away from the couple, but she’d had some words with him as well – his shame knew no bounds, apparently, and he would back any judgment she made. She could see that Torsten’s grief and shock were genuine. And to his credit, he wasn’t the kind of insensate beast that would simply dismiss Hillevi as a venomous harridan, the archetypal Bad Wife. He was attempting to bear some of the burden of responsibility, but Brelyna decided in fairness that he could be fully exonerated. He was, after all, a well-meaning sort at heart, she could see that much.

She had also spoken to the Llothas mother and son. Young Llaro had been subdued – he was getting some very hard lessons to process, after all. Radene had seem… unmoved. She professed herself unsurprised by the outcome of the trial, and commended her for the cunning use of the locket as emotional manipulation. “Worthy of the Webspinner,” she’d said, her eyes glinting faintly with approval. “Azura’s wisdom is clearly with you, sera. Now you must see that vengeance is enacted upon the child-killer.

Out of all of the concerned parties, Radene Llothas was the only one who was keen at all to see Hillevi Cruel-Sea put to death for what she’d done.

Or rather, Hillevi Child-Killer – that was what people in the street were calling her, now. Whispering it, behind the backs of their furtively raised hands.

Brunwulf would defer to her judgment – he’d made that plain. His respect for the Dragonborn was boundless; from the beginning that much had been abundantly clear. He would object to nothing said by her chosen Voice. The other contingents, thankfully, had sent no representatives to speak to her, perhaps not wishing to interrupt her cogitation about the impending judgment. They would be present, all the same, and listening attentively, scrutinizing her verdict.

Brelyna could see Lydia strolling slowly along the riverbank, kicking at the occasional Mudcrab as she strode along. The housecarl was carrying a small sack and a bottle – victuals, probably, for Brelyna’s breakfast. Brelyna hadn’t slept all night, and she had to confess she was starting to feel a little hungry. So she nodded gratefully at Lydia when she was handed a crust of fresh-baked bread and a hunk of eidar cheese, accompanied by a flask of Honningbrew. While she arranged everything on a piece of linen on her lap, Lydia sat on another rock and carved up an apple with her dagger.

“We’re changing, you know,” Lydia said, as Brelyna ate and drank. “Slowly, but we are. The Dragonborn is the Harbinger of more than just the Companions of Jorrvaskr. Just a few years ago, before she started… being herself… all this? None of this would’ve made any waves at all. If this had happened on Ulfric’s watch there’d have been no justice anywhere. Some supernatural things might’ve happened, hauntings and all that, but not likely. Hillevi might well have carried the secret to her grave.”

“Maybe the marriage might not even have taken place,” Brelyna pointed out, wiping away crumbs from her mouth with the back of her hand, and accepting a slice of apple from Lydia.

“Yes, exactly. You see? Things are changing. For the better, I mean. And you’re a big part of that, Brelyna. Always were.”

Lydia paused, then went on. “We Nords call Ysgramor the Harbinger of Us All. You’ve read the old stories, so you know why. But all that strife, a Nord killing an Elf just because he’s an Elf, an Elf killing a Nord just because he’s a Nord… all that’s in the ancient past. The buried, mythic past. And now, the Last Dragonborn has that title – the Harbinger. I believe that’s no accident. Things have come full circle. A new war is coming, and to a whole lot of ignorant people it looks like a war against Elves, Talos-worshippers against the Thalmor… except that it’s not. Even I know it’s a much bigger war than anyone can imagine. Heh.” She chuckled. “Hang out with you lot long enough, even a lunk like me can learn something. It’s a war to keep on existing, isn’t it?”

“That’s… well, that’s the gist, yes.”

Lydia handed her another apple slice. “Hillevi and her kind… they’re already in the past. The dead past. They just don’t know it yet.” She crooked a smile. “Makes them rather like draugr, really.”

“What would you do in my place, Lydia?”

“Hmm. I’m not sure that’s a helpful question to ask me, Brelyna.” The housecarl stretched her limbs. “I’m a warrior. A guard. It’s in the job description: I look after the house. Big house, small house, house the size of a city or Hold, I look after it. I take orders from anyone who holds my oath. I fight my foes, and if I die I go to Sovngarde. It’s simple for me that way. But your path isn’t the same at all. And it’s your path we all need to walk, for now. Right behind you.” Lydia grinned. “So lead on, serjo. I’m sworn to carry your burdens.”

Brelyna rolled her eyes. “Hrrmm,” she remarked. “Not all of them, evidently.”

Lydia’s grin faded a little. “No. Not all.”

They sat for a while longer in companionable silence.

“You ready to go Speak to them?” Lydia asked, when Brelyna had been adequately refreshed by her repast.

Brelyna slipped on her gloves, and sighed. She looked out again at the shimmering waters of the river.

_The dead, mythic past?_

_Very well. Let the past bury the past._

“Yes,” she said.

“You’ll do just fine, Brelyna. Come on then. I’ll back you.”

**

She stood midway upon the steps leading to the Palace, where there was a broad platform.

Hillevi was there, under guard, and this time the shackles remained. Brunwulf and his Steward stood nearby, but not at the forefront. The families – Cruel-Sea and Llothas – stood nearest to her at the foot of the steps, in front of the crowd. They were standing more or less together now – but only because Grimvar and Luaffyn were holding hands, with an almost defiant air about them.

Thousands of eyes stared at Brelyna. Thousands of ears were pricked to hear her Speak. Even a small band of Khajiit merchants were standing at the back, ears stiffly perked upright.

The secret to what the Dragonborn did, Brelyna knew, did not truly lie in the speaking – that is to say, in the movement of lips and tongue and throat. It lay, above all, in __listening. __As the Voice of the Dragonborn, her first and foremost duty here was to listen… to the Voice of the Sky.

Brelyna looked up and listened.

And then she Spoke, into the profound silence.

I tell you of beginnings.  
I tell you first of a beginning,  
A song from a lake of joy and grace,  
Heard by ears that lead to a heart  
That fills with a love that wishes to give  
Of itself, and thereby become itself.

Nourish them. Nourish our beginnings.  
Not all things are blessed, but  
All seeds are.  
The blessings are in the seeds. 

Yes, I have seen her eyes.  
In a peaceful garden the dark flowers now  
Are always her eyes,  
Full-colored, as haunting as the sky  
Of a burning city. 

A shadow comes. It hovers above  
And burns with a despair  
That flows as wide as an icy river.  
Where does the shadow come from?  
It comes out of people, says the child.  
It comes out of people who will not change,  
Who will stand in the middle of a river  
And not flow,  
Who will stand facing the biting wind  
And not move,  
Who will stand in the darkness  
And not go towards the light.  
All is given to them,  
And they do not change. 

The shadow comes, leaves its poison  
Spreading in the pool, darkening it,  
And it goes away, like a rustling of spite.  
Soldiers march through the streets,  
Saying, “Where is our home?”  
Seeds lie in the cold earth,  
Saying, “Where is the sun?”  
The Breath of Kyne moves through the city,  
Searching. 

There is a flame over the trees,  
A light over the mountains.  
It is the light of the morning.  
It comes to us as a golden dawn,  
And the darkness goes,  
Shivering into nothing like the dream of a fog. 

Listen to the waves of the sea.  
Listen to the murmurs of the branches.  
Listen to the ballad of ice and snow.  
Listen to the song of love,  
The love that gives us ourselves.  
Nourish the seeds that are  
The imaginings of peace.  
Feed the many pure fires of lives woven together  
In the hearths of each other’s homes.  
We will learn new ways of healing wounds  
In a world that is known to all. 

I have told you of beginnings.  
What, then, of endings?  
Here is the answer:  
Love is first.  
Never abandon. Never abandon.

Brelyna turned to look at Hillevi.

“Hillevi Cruel-Sea. This is my judgment of you. For a wrongdoing of this magnitude, which you have committed, many would agree that death should be your sentence. But I say different. From this day forth, by the oldest creeds of Atmora of old, you are _nithing.”_

Hillevi suddenly went very still.

“You will not be put to death,” Brelyna said. “But you shall be as the dead among the living. In the eyes of the law, you are already dead. Everything you own, even the clothes on your back, now belongs to your daughter-in-law Luaffyn, to dispose of as she wishes. You may not own property, enter contracts, initiate lawsuits, appeal to the Jarl or his government for aid, nor make a will and testament effective after your death. You will not leave Hollyfrost Farm without Luaffyn’s permission. Luaffyn shall be given power over you as a parent over a child, or as in senility. In her absence her mother Radene will hold the same power over you. In their absence, your husband Torsten will uphold their wishes with regard to you. And the entire household will watch you to ensure that you never harm another child, ever again.

“Furthermore, when you die, your soul will go nowhere, except back to the Dreamsleeve. You will never walk the paths of Sovngarde, nor cross the Whalebone Bridge, nor even approach the Hall of Shor. The Shield-Thane Tsun will not see even the palest shadow of you. The heroes of Sovngarde turn their backs on you. Your ancestors look away and do not see you.

“There will be no funerary rites. Your body will be disposed of in any manner that Luaffyn or her appointed executor deems fit. No cairn will be raised, no tombstone will mark your grave. No offerings will be left for your departed shade. The Halls of the Dead are closed to you. You will die without remembrance.”

Hillevi began to shiver violently, as if standing naked in a blizzard, and the guards to either side of her had to hold her up by her arms.

Brelyna fixed her gaze upon her until their eyes met again.

“From this day forth, every breath you take is by my mercy. Every bite of sustenance you consume is by Luaffyn’s charity. By these things, mercy and charity – such as you do not possess – you shall live. And perhaps some day, you will learn what it is to be truly alive. That day may come. Or it may not.

“Until then… Hillevi Cruel-Sea, you are _nithing._

“I am the Voice of the Dragonborn. This concludes my Speaking.”

**

Grimvar and Luaffyn came together to meet her in the appointed place, in the Valunstrad district of Windhelm. Brelyna saw them and waved them over. She nodded encouragingly at the burly old Nord patriarch who stood with her.

“Luaffyn, Grimvar, I’m not sure if you already know this man…”

“We do. Torbjorn Shatter-Shield. He’s a regular patron at Candlehearth Hall,” Luaffyn stated, raising an eyebrow a little at Brelyna.

“So he is. Torbjorn, I don’t suppose introductions are necessary.”

“No, no they’re not.” Torbjorn gave the couple a warm smile, albeit with bleary bloodshot eyes. “You’re Torsten’s boy Grimvar. I know you. You remember me, boy? I couldn’t come to your wedding. Well, I’m sorry to hear about all that’s happened, but it’s good to see you, and your lovely wife Luaffyn. Seems like only yesterday you were running amok all over the city with my little girls…”

“Um, hello, Uncle Torbjorn. I hope… I hope you’ve been keeping well,” Grimvar said, without much obvious hope.

“Well enough, boy, well enough.” Torbjorn coughed, cleared his throat, and turned to Luaffyn. “I want you to know,” he said, slowly and carefully, “that I, Torbjorn of House Shatter-Shield, do utterly repudiate and disavow the actions and creeds of Hillevi Cruel-Sea. The Sons of Skyrim…” He paused, sniffled, and rubbed his nose. “The Sons of Skyrim do not and will never condone what she did. We’re not murderers. Not child-killers. No. Never.” He shook his head vigorously.

Luaffyn’s eyes narrowed. “If you say so.” She turned questioning eyes upon Brelyna, who made placatory gestures with her hands. _Wait. Wait a little longer._

Torbjorn’s eyes wandered to the side, and upwards. They were standing in front of a massive mansion, under its gables. “Do you remember this place, Grimvar? Luaffyn, do you know this place?” Without waiting for an answer he continued. “Hjerim, this is. ‘Home of Frost’. My Friga’s home, before she died.” He blinked wetly. “Aye, a fine home my Friga won for herself, with her own coin. Didn’t need a septim from her da. Earned it all on her own.”

“Luaffyn, Grimvar, I have a proposition for you, and Torbjorn has professed himself in favor of it,” Brelyna told them. Torbjorn nodded in agreement. “Listen. You’re free to decline, of course, but should you choose to accept it, Torbjorn would like to turn Hjerim over to the both of you as a gift.”

Grimvar’s eyes widened. Luaffyn gasped.

“Wait. Hear me out. Torbjorn has terms.”

“You tell them, Brelyna. Go ahead. I’ll just… I’ll just be over here for a while. Let me know what they say,” Torbjorn mumbled as he wandered away to gaze at some corner of the front garden, currently overgrown with weeds which were in turn lightly sprinkled with frost.

“He would like Hjerim to be converted into an orphanage for the many homeless children in the streets of Windhelm, many of whom lost their families during all the recent troubles. Honorhall Orphanage in Riften is almost full to bursting. I happen to know that Constance Michel is in the unpleasant position of having to turn away some children from her doors. She puts them on a waiting list, but really, it amounts to about the same thing, with how long the list is getting. It’s mostly Eastmarch and The Rift that have been hit the hardest, and Jarl Brunwulf has been considering setting aside some funds to address this problem for quite some time. But he can’t spare the resources just yet. So, I understand that this is quite a lot to ask of you, quite a responsibility you’re being asked to shoulder at a difficult time, but…”

Grimvar was shaking his head, but in wonder, not in denial. Luaffyn was staring open-mouthed at the manor. “I remember coming here, just after Friga had bought it,” Grimvar said softly. “I was still just a boy. I remember boasting to Friga that when it was my turn to go out adventuring in the world, I’d bring back enough treasure to buy a house twice the size of hers. She just laughed and ruffled my hair.” He smiled fondly at the memory.

“The local residents say there’s a curse on this house, because of how it featured in some very gruesome serial killings a while back. But I’ve given this my personal inspection. It’s safe. When a Dunmer tells you that a place is completely free of the unquiet dead or any ghostly influence… you’d do best to trust her opinion.” Brelyna winked, and Luaffyn grinned back. Grimvar chuckled and nodded.

“A whole orphanage… but I couldn’t… I don’t…” Luaffyn stammered.

“You’re a natural mother, Luaffyn. I can see that. I know I’m not the Voice of the Dragonborn anymore – my commission has been fulfilled – but all the same, I’m telling you the truth. As I see it. And you, Grimvar… I think you’d make a very good father, if you should ever want to have children of your own again some day. But until then… I can’t think of anyone else in the city I’d rather entrust with the care of all the war orphans.

“Your mother and brother could help, if they wished. Grimvar can do all the carpentry you need, can’t he? It would be hard work, but steady, and you’d be relatively safe within the city walls.” Yes, after all, serial killers didn’t come along quite that often… they really didn’t. “Comfortable, too. Better than a shack out on the farm. Think on it?”

“I’ll ask. But I think they’ll say yes,” Luaffyn said, her eyes shining.

Grimvar took her hand. “The children will love your singing,” he told her.

“And you’ll make for them beds that don’t creak.”

Brelyna coughed. “There’ll be the small matter of the stipend. Torbjorn will be helping you to fund the orphanage. Unto perpetuity, more or less. So you needn’t worry overmuch about expenses. Isn’t that right, Torbjorn?”

The old Nord came shuffling back, shoulders bowed. “My house is ended, after all,” he said quietly. “And I don’t need to be buried with all my wealth. Company’s still giving me a much bigger income than I need. You can have it. We’ll work it out later. I’ll get my shipping clerk to handle it – she’s a Dunmer, you know, like you two. Good head for numbers. Name of Suvaris Atheron. I’ll pass the instructions. Practically running the business for me, for the last few years or so. Don’t doubt but what she’s skimmed a hefty bit off the top for herself, but whatever’s left over is still more than I can spend. Man can only drink so much mead.” He coughed again. “Long as I know there’ll be good people looking after all the children,” he said, his voice low. “Nord or otherwise. You can take the money. Put it to better use than I ever will.”

“Uncle Torbjorn… I…” Grimvar said in a choked voice.

Torbjorn waved him off irritably. “Fine. Fine.” He wandered off again, up the steps to the front doors.

“How’s this, to honor Llevana’s memory? I’m sure Grimvar could carve a plaque, or a statuette,” Brelyna suggested quietly.

“Oh,” Luaffyn said, and started crying, leaning on Grimvar’s shoulder.

Brelyna stood by quietly, looking up and down the street. A grimy face poked out from behind a corner. She smiled at the urchin, who immediately vanished.

This was only the beginning, but it was a good one. It was one of many. It would do, for now.

_As always, Dragonborn, you were right. Love is first. Never abandon. Never abandon._

**

Brelyna’s quill moved across the parchment.

_… and that concludes my full report of the events that have transpired within this past week, which Lydia is now delivering to your hand. _

_The silver locket you gave me was passed into the keeping of Torsten Cruel-Sea, but he seems to have gifted Luaffyn with it, which seems gratifyingly appropriate. Plans for the new Orphanage are under way. Torsten, meanwhile, seems eager to rehabilitate the reputation of his clan, and he has entered into an arrangement with the Dunmer Association and Argonian Assemblage to provide aid for the cripples and orphans of the city, offering them substantial donations out of his coffers. The Sons of Skyrim are quiet – I do not know if it is the calm before a storm, or if the headwinds for their movement have simply died away after this affair, but I suppose that is something I will have to discover for myself._

_I have given much thought to Jarl Brunwulf’s offer, and as ever I would much appreciate your guidance in this matter, if you have any to give. In truth, however, I feel almost sure that I will choose to accept it, at least temporarily – that is to say, for the next ten years or so at a minimum. I do not think, after all, that the position of Court Wizard is one that should be entered into or vacated casually, and I do take the Jarl’s offer very seriously indeed._

_I am given to understand that Wuunferth the Unliving has applied personally to the Jarl for permission to go into retirement. I do not believe any coercion was applied in this matter – it would be out of keeping with what I have observed to be the character of Brunwulf’s government. It is much more likely that things are simply what they seem: he is a relic of Ulfric’s regime, and this touted “New Society” for the people of Windhelm is shaping up to be one in which he would constitute a poor fit. I would feel uneasy if I were supplanting him on the basis of an involuntary removal from his position, but thankfully this does not seem to be the case._

_Ever since leaving the College, I have felt rather adrift and at a loss, as you well know. It sometimes feels as though my life consists of leaving things and people behind. Perhaps it is time for that to change. The more I consider the prospect of becoming Windhelm’s Court Wizard, the more I perceive its attractions and appealing aspects._

_I have seen the true face of Skyrim now. It looks like nothing I expected. _

_It is a face that, I think, I could grow to love. Because now I know what I can fight for, and how. Now I know what to protect, and why. As a farmer knows what to harvest and what to discard, as a gardener knows what to nurture and what to prune off, so must I now discern matters in this place, this city, and work towards its betterment. I know why you sent me here, now._

_And I know why I must not fail you._

_~ Brelyna Maryon_

_Dated this 30th of Frostfall, 4E 204._


End file.
